August

The Innermost Desire

Today’s First Reading (Isaiah 55:1-3) is one of the great roots of spirituality for the Biblical tree. It talks about desire. If you are thirsty, come to the water. If you are hungry, come and eat. It is as simple as that.

Some people laugh if I ask them whether they know the hymn "Come to the Water." To them it is like asking whether they have heard the Star Spangled Banner. Since I am the composer of "Come to the Water" (but not of the Star Spangled Banner!), I am humbled.

But of course it is not "my" hymn, it is ours. The Christian and Catholic community understand Isaiah’s words (the words of the hymn) as naming something very deep within them, a mighty and profound opening within human beings in which they can taste the sweetness of the Lord. I think of huge areas of the world physically without enough food or water, such a scourge upon the earth. You and I can help solve it. But only by feeling the keen hunger within us for God.

Only God can slake our thirst for being loved and giving love, our need for the whole of our life to make sense, our feeling of emptiness at odd times or maybe all the time, our desire for "something more" than our difficult lives can provide. Some of us are simply hoping that there is some reason for hoping at all.

Only God can give out food good enough to satisfy our longing, because only God is the creator and lover of all that is. He is not some being who created the world some time in the distant past and then sat back to let things take their course, however rough that course may be. God creates all things right now, continuing to keep everything in existence right this second. Even one centimeter of a second’s inattention on the part of God and the world would cease.

To the eyes of faith this continuous creation is a beautiful cause for quiet gratitude.

"Come to the Water" says as much: "Why should you spend your life, except for the Lord." The word "spend" here calls to mind spending your wages. But more important, the Gospel for Sunday says how Jesus paid out his own life. It is a special scene. Jesus is grieving for his mentor and friend, John the Baptist. He want to be alone in order to let that grief happen. But instead of solitude, Jesus finds a huge crowd of hungry people, hoping he will feed their souls. His heart is moved by them. He puts aside his own sadness and cures them. He feeds their hunger and slakes their thirst.

In the Gospel reading it is their physical needs he attends to, as a symbol of their deeper hunger. And on Sunday you and I will be fed by his life itself (especially when we hear the readings) and by his very passion, death and resurrection (Eucharistic rite, Communion). We are invited in. Our deepest longing is to be assuaged. We are fed.

"Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is my body."

Pre-Prayering

Friday was the feast of the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. He lived his early life totally dedicated to the celebration and advancement of himself. He lived to indulge his vanities in the courtly circles and military ranks until he was brought to his knees by a cannonball while fighting the French invaders. It was his first of many dyings; no more warring, looking “fine” and no more spending his wages “on what fails to satisfy.” In 1556 Ignatius, formerly of the castle of Loyola in the north of Spain, died for the last time.

During his physical recovery he began recovering his senses; the sense of the giftliness of God, the sense of responsibility for the gifts of his body, life, creation. In recovery, he was a man of the vision, seeing the fingerprints of God on everything. He had been found and kept being found even as he help find others.

His awareness of the presence of God allowed him to be more freely present to the challenges of following Jesus right into the lives and hearts of others. He gathered his early companions while studying in Paris and they eventually dedicated themselves to celebrating and advancing the person and mission of Jesus.

He taught the art of dying daily and hourly to the seductive invitations of the world and the evil one.

Ignatius had listened well to what failed to nourish him and had heard deeply, “Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life.” Please join us in praying in thanksgiving for the life, deaths and call of Ignatius Loyola.

Please pray that we—his companions—can be likewise faithful to the listening, the dyings and the joys of following Jesus.

It would be a good thing to reflect upon how Jesus let go of his own personal loss to find the lost in the crowd and how he had compassion on them and got out of himself to be for others. That would be a good prayer.

 

Reflection

What we hear in the First Reading for this liturgy are three short poetic invitations which begin the last chapter of the Book of Consolation within the collections known as the Book of Isaiah. These sixteen chapters are made up of oracles, poems, foretelling of the future, and bold announcements to the people of Israel who are in captivity. The entire chapter is worth reading for our own consolations in our personal times of unfreedom and worry.

The Gospel for today opens with Jesus’ hearing of the death of his cousin John, the account of which immediately precedes the verses for today. Jesus retires to a boat and heads across the water to a lonely place for obvious reasons. For further obvious reasons the crowds follow him.

For even further obvious reasons Jesus allows his space to be interrupted by the crowds and their sick. He extends himself into the crowd by taking bread and fish and blessing them for distribution. The crowd numbers over five thousand and Jesus gives the bread and fish to his early church-members for the feeding. When those who had eaten were full, there were still leftovers. Imagine that.

Each of the four gospels has at least one account of this miraculous bread-and-fish display. It is the only story from the public life of Jesus heard from all four writers, so it must be quite symbolic and important to the message and purpose of Jesus.

This Gospel story seems to me to be about fragility. The crowd, the paucity of the bread/fish offering, the simple humanity of the disciples charged with the miraculous multiplications.

Jesus meets people where they are, in their truth. He meets them in a condition in which they wish they were not. Jesus uses the meaningful gestures of humanity to attract to the reality beyond words.

As a Catholic priest, I am grateful that I cannot comprehend totally all that I and we are doing together at the Eucharist. I believe it deeply, but my own human frailty and yours prevent us from doing what the disciples were asked to do. The fragility of the unconsecrated bread is such a comfort. It is me, it is you, individually and communally.

I would love, at least once, to grasp, as I grasp the bread of consecration, the depth of intensity in Christ’s desires for being with us in our fragility. I often think it is a gift, that we do not know what we are doing and, if we did, we might not want to do such an immensely sacred thing.

I wonder if and when the disciples found out that they were at the multiplication tables themselves. Perhaps they too, were prevented from experiencing the depths of love which Jesus had through them, for his lost little ones.

The fragility of each of us is embraced, a blessing is said over us, an urgency is extended through us to embrace our littleness, as God does, and let it be given, let it be done, let it be more than we can comprehend, but just the right amount for our handing it over and over and over again.

We are the bread he blesses and we are how he looks upon the fragility around us and says, “You are more than enough!”

Take Lord, receive, all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, my entire will.
All I have and hold You have given me.
To You Lord, I return it, everything is Yours, do with it what You will.
Only Your love and Your grace, that is enough for me.

St. Ignatius Loyola, from the Spiritual Exercises

Fragments From Some Prophetic Loaves and Fishes

"They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over - twelve wicker baskets full."

After Jesus had fed a crowd of more than five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, he asked his apostles to gather up the fragments that were left over, scattered here and there on the ground. They did as he asked and ended up filling twelve baskets with leftovers.

Recently, I attended a series of lectures by Walter Brueggemann. He is widely respected for his biblical scholarship, he feeds crowds from some healthy baskets, but he is perhaps even more deeply regarded because of his concern for the poor and his challenge to us to reach out to them with justice and generosity. After he had fed us, the crowds, here are some of the fragments that were gathered up:

There is today a real danger of excessive privatization of our faith. The church must advocate too for the public conscience, not just for the private conscience.

Jesus before Pontius Pilate turned the question of power into the question of truth. Truth will always erode the chains of power and power will never stop truth. Truth is a spirit that works at bringing the world into harmony with God.

Where truth operates you see poverty turn into abundance; death turn into life; war turn into peace; and hunger turn into food.

In Moses, truth confronts power; in Elijah, truth ignores power; and in Josiah, truth transforms power.

You can always recognize a "Pharaoh": If you've seen one, you've seen them all! Pharaohs all have bad dreams, accumulate things, need ever larger bins to store their possessions, are permeated with anxiety, and are de-absolutized as soon as God enters the situation. Where do we have bad dreams?

A truth-filled God always conspires against Pharaoh. God, eventually, comes to a crisis and redefines it.

Scripture ultimately speaks of bodily pain and painful slavery. Redemption, just as at the original Exodus, will always begin with a cry of distress and end with a dance of joy. Bodies that hurt must come to voice and that voice must say that this pain is abnormal and shouldn't be borne any longer. Painful slavery and a truth-filled God will eventually make for you a path through the waters where Pharaoh cannot follow. Therefore we must never allow our pathologies to become normal, nor accept slavery for the security it brings.

For the most part today, the media reflects the ideology of Pharaoh and yet we willing pipe it in. When we turn off our screens for awhile we begin to feel freer.

God's task of transformation is invariably entrusted to reluctant human will and courage.

The Book of Deuteronomy is one of the greatest social documents ever written, it links faith to public life, to economics, and to justice. It directs faith always to the poor, towards "widows, orphans, and strangers." Deuteronomy might be the most subversive document in the entire Old Testament. Among other things, it teaches uncompromisingly that laissez-faire economics needs some clear moral checks. In the temptations of Jesus in his dialogue with the devil, he quotes scripture three times and each time it is a passage from Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy keeps reminding us that we once all were slaves and that it is not good to have amnesia. We should not absolutize the present and imagine it has always been this way. All of us should remember where we came from, not least today in our debates about immigration.

If we do not heed the words of Deuteronomy about taking care of the poor we will have to deal with the scroll of Jeremiah who assures us that the world as we know it will come to and end because it cannot be sustained in its falseness.

For Jeremiah, to intercede for the poor and needy is to know God.

The prophetic tradition in scripture reminds us that there are three great virtues: generosity, hospitality, and forgiveness. Conversely our culture invites us to guard possessions, protect ourselves, and hold grudges.

Our great rationalization: "If I had lived in those early times when the issues were clear, I would have offered myself as a martyr, but today the issues aren't that clear."

The preaching of justice is only going to become more difficult as society is more and more devoured by anxiety. However, if we preach justice and society doesn't listen, it's society's problem. But if we don't preach justice, it's our problem.

In answer to the question of why God sometimes seems to counsel violence in Scripture: The God of the bible is in recovery for all the violence that has been attributed to him and done in his name. And, inside our churches, we are all in various stages of recovery.

Our prayers are generally too reverential: We need to pray more like Moses and remind God of what he promised us.

We are the only ones in town who know the way out of this crisis!

• For the Church: that we may welcome all who hunger for meaning and purpose into our assembly and share with them the Word of God and the Bread of Life
• For grace to trust: that we may recognize that nothing can separate us from the Love of God and rely upon God through all the challenges of life
• For confidence in God’s love: that experiencing God’s love and care for us may sustain us through all hardships and keep us united with Christ forever
• For a spirit of awe and wonder: that we may recognize God’s generosity who abundantly blesses us and fulfills all our needs
• For greater gratitude: that we may recognize and appreciate all the gifts which God has given us and freely share them with others who are in need
• For all Catechumens and Candidates: that they will take God’s Word to heart and grow in knowledge and intimacy with God
• For all who are searching for deeper meaning: that they may find abundant nourishment in God’s Word and everlasting peace
• For all who are hungry, undernourished, or struggling to feed their families: that God will ease their suffering, guide them to new food resources,  and touch the hearts of many to share with them
• For all who work in or support food pantries: that their efforts may show the love and compassion of God to hungry children and families
• For all who work the fields or bring food to our tables: that God will protect them, renew their strength, and make fruitful their labors
• For those who visit and bring nourishment to the sick and homebound: that they may see Christ in all whom they serve and bring God’s love to those whom they visit
• For all parents and students as the school year approaches: that God will give them wisdom and insight as they review their options and choose the best way to learning this year
• For all who are seeking employment: that God will give them courage, open new opportunities for them, guide them to settings where their gifts can be fully utilized
• For refugees and immigrants: that God will free hearts to recognize them as our sisters and brothers, and help us offer them support and welcome
• For Peace: that God will guide the human family away from using nuclear weapons and inspire leaders to find new ways to resolve disputes 

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• dismiss the crowds
• buy food for themselves
• give them some food yourselves
• are all we have
• bring them here to me
• he said the blessing
• all … were satisfied.

To the point: The disciples ask Jesus to dismiss the crowds so they can buy food. Jesus tells them simply to “give them food yourselves.” But the disciples cannot satisfy the crowds' hunger until they give Jesus all they have—a meager five loaves and two fish. Jesus blesses these gifts and returns them to the disciples who then have enough to feed the crowds, even with “fragments left over.” It is not the meager resources we have that count, but what Jesus can do with these resources when we give all we have to him.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: Come! Come! Come! So compellingly and urgently does God invite us to a feast of rich fare that God provides freely and without cost. Come!
… to experience: Marketing is always playing on our appetites—eat this! buy that! get more! Marketing offers us the false hope of satisfaction. True satisfaction comes only from our giving what we have to God who returns it to us in abundance. 

The Higher Love

What will separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35).
For the longest time I misread the meaning of Paul’s passage on the love of Christ. It was the “of” that threw me. I took it to mean our love of God, not God’s love of us. Thus, trial or persecution or threats should not shake our love. No creature should come between us and our love for God, no power should overcome us. Love, in this reading, was a task to do, an achievement to be strived for. Our faith was a noble task of steadfast love on our part.

It is quite clear, however, that Paul is saying something else: nothing in existence can ever separate us from the love that God, revealed in Jesus, has for us. Not only does the first interpretation miss the boat by focusing on our attitudes and desires; it fosters one of the most persistent mistakes about our faith. Christian faith is not primarily about something we do for God. It is about what God does for and in us. It is not so much an account of human aspiration as it is a revelation of divine desire.

The covenant that Isaiah promised to David’s progeny could not be bought or earned. It was there for the taking, like water for the thirsty to drink. It was the gift of food that need not be purchased, wine and milk without cost. All we need do is accept the offer.

This could be troubling. Does it mean that we don’t have to work at all? Is our faith effortless? Are our actions, good or sinful, inconsequential in the eyes of God?

It certainly seems not. After all, the dragnet parable about the reign of God from this week’s longer gospel reading suggests that we humans perform both good and evil acts.

More troubling still, it seems that at the end of the world there will be a host of angels who will separate the wicked from the just and cast the wicked into a fire, where they will grind their teeth. That statement sounds as though we actually can be separated from the love of God. It also sounds scary.

What’s going on here? Is it possible that the refusal of the gift, the rejection of God’s love, can separate us? Is faith in the promise, hope in the covenant, acceptance of the love, the work we must do, the only effort we must make to avoid damnation? Of that I’m not sure; it raises the awesome question whether anyone is eternally lost.

But I do believe the words of the psalmist suggest an answer: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his deeds. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.”

Jesus, his heart moved by compassion, cured the sick. More tellingly, when his disciples wanted to dismiss the pressing crowd to search for food, he told his followers to offer their own food freely. Five loaves and two fish fed thousands, the fragments filling twelve bushels. Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Somewhere in the mystery of God is an unlimited bounty, whether it makes sense to us or not. This God we meet in Jesus just does not work according to our ways. It may not make for good business, it may even be bad law, but whatever else it is, it seems to be God’s way of loving.

Commentary by Ephrem

They all ate and were satisfied. (Mt 14:20)
Our Lord in a desert place changed a few loaves into many, and at Cana turned water into wine. Thus before the time came to give men and women his own body and blood to feed on, he accustomed their palates to his bread and wine, giving them a taste of transitory bread and wine to teach them to delight in his life-giving body and blood.

He gave them things of little value for nothing to make them understand that his supreme gift would be given yet more freely. He gave them for nothing what they could have bought from him, what in fact they wanted to buy, to teach them that he asked them for no payment.

When it was not permitted them to give him the price of bread and wine, which they could have done, they certainly could not pay him for his body and blood.

Moreover, as well as giving freely he lovingly cajoled us, offering us these small things without charge to attract us and cause us to go and receive something greater and beyond all price.

He awakened our desire by things pleasing to the palate in order to draw us to that which gives life to the soul. He gave a sweet taste to the wine he created to show how great is the treasure hidden in his life-giving blood.

Consider how his creative power penetrates everything. Our Lord took a little bread, and in the twinkling of an eye multiplied it. Work that would take us ten months to accomplish he did with his ten fingers in a moment.

His hands were as earth beneath the bread and his voice was as thunder above it. The movement of his lips acted as dew, the breath of his mouth as sunlight, and in a brief moment he accomplished what normally takes much time.

Thus the shortage was forgotten; many loaves came from few as in the flrst blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

The Lord also showed those to whom he gave his precepts the power of his holy word, and how swiftly he would reward those who accepted it. Nevertheless, he did not increase the number of loaves as much as he could have done, but only enough to satisfy those who were to eat them.

His power was not the measure of his miracle, but the people’s hunger. Had his miracle been measured by his power it would have been a victory beyond all measure. Measured by the hunger of thousands, there was a surplus of twelve baskets full.

Humans who practice any craft always fall short of their customers’ desires—they are unable to meet their requirements; but what God does goes beyond anyone’s desire.

The Lord said: “Gather up what remains so that nothing is wasted” because he wanted to be sure they would not think they had seen a vision. When the fragments had been kept for a day or two they would believe the Lord had really done this, and they had not just imagined it.

(Diatessaron 12, 1.3-5: CSCO 145
Scriptores Armeniaci, t. 2, 115-117)

 

 
Ephrem (c.306-373), the only Syrian Father who is honored as a doctor of the Church, was ordained deacon at Edessa in 363, and gave an outstanding example of a deacon’s life and work.

Most of his exegetical, dogmatic, controversial, and ascetical writings are in verse. They provide a rich mine of information regarding the faith and practice of the early Syrian Church. The poetry of Ephrem greatly influenced the development of Syriac and Greek hymnography.

Dinner and a Show

I once heard a scholar, interviewed on a TV special about Jesus, refer to the feeding of the five thousand with the phrase “dinner and a show.” His point was, I think, to characterize Jesus' ministry as “meeting folks where they are.” And that is surely part of the meaning of this episode.

Responding in heartfelt compassion. to the people’s needs, Jesus healed them and fed them. But there are other dimensions to the account as well. Characterizing the Galilean seaside as a “desert” place surely evokes the memory of Israel in the wilderness and Jesus as a new Moses mediating manna for the wanderers invited into a new Exodus.

The similarity to the account in 2 Kings 4:24-44 about Elisha feeding one hundred with twenty loaves reminds us that a prophet greater than Elisha is here. And no one misses the parallel between Jesus' gestures here—taking, blessing, and breaking the loaves and giving them to his disciples—and his actions at the Last Supper. What catches my attention this time is the role of the disciples. Told to feed the people, they think only of their own meager resources.

When they heed Jesus’ command, “Bring them to me,” the people are abundantly fed. That reminds us disciples, ordained and nonordained alike, that our part in the mission does not depend on our own poor resources but on bringing others to the feeder and healer himself, Jesus.

The first reading comes a portion of Isaiah that is encouraging those who had been in exile in Babylon to trust in God's providence and they will see an abundance of blessing.  God invites the people to come to him, for life comes from God.  God promises to renew the covenant, the everlasting relationship, with those who respond.  It is a passage filled with hope and invitation.  It hints at a bountiful banquet as a symbol of the abundance that comes from being with God.  There is also a communal aspect, “all who are thirsty.”  God invites us repeatedly into community and relationship. 
 
God wants a relationship with each of us and with all of us.  Each day God invites us to “Come to me.”  While a relationship with God does not insulate us from challenges, trials, or sufferings.  Having the relationship ensures us that God is with us in those times and throughout our life.  When God is with us, we can trust, as did Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well.” 
 
The Gospel passage continues the theme of God’s abundant providence with the feeding of the multitude.  This banquet that Jesus offers is set in contrast to the banquet that Herod provided in the preceding verses that ended in the death of John the Baptist.  The banquet that Jesus offers promotes and sustains life.  Jesus grieves John's death and in that pain is able to meet others in pain and share life with them. 
 
The feeding of the multitude is recorded six times in the four gospels, more than any other event in the ministry of Jesus.  Upon seeing the crowd, Jesus is moved with pity and heals the sick.   As the evening draws on, Jesus has the people sit, and he takes the bread, looks up to heaven, blesses it, breaks the loaves, and orders them to be distributed.  These same words are used in Matthew at the last supper, take, bless, break, and eat.  The feeding of the multitude is a prefiguration of the Eucharist, which will be a sharing in the eternal messianic banquet. 
 
Jesus meets the need of the crowd in their lack and their poverty.  Jesus also seeks to meet us.  If we do not recognize our poverty, if we do not have a need, then what Jesus offers is of little value.  When we realize our need, then there is room for Jesus to enter our life at that moment.  It is also there that we recognize our need for one another and become a community of followers.  Our American perspective is very individualistic.  There is great emphasis on doing it ourselves.  The Gospel perspective is that we can never do it all by ourselves.  We continually need God and one another to come to the fullness of life. 
 
The ministry of the disciples is also highlighted.  Jesus commands them to give the bread to the people.  Ministry in the Christian community has existed from the beginning.  It has changed and evolved over time, depending upon who the people were who were ministering and what the needs of the community were. 

In baptism, we are all called to further the work of Christ in our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and the world at large.  This is called the ministry of the laity.  We are to bring the virtues and ideals of Christ to the world at large.   
 
A specialized ministry within the Christian community also developed and it is identified as ordained ministry.  These ministries are currently only open to men. There are three components to this ministry. Deacons care for the needs of the Christian community through visiting the sick, organizing food pantries, assisting in education, and ministering at prisons.  Secondly, there are presbyters, commonly referred to as priests. They pastor parishes, celebrate the sacraments, and co-ordinate the ministries and life of a particular Christian community. Thirdly, there are bishops (overseers) who are responsible for the life of the Christian community in a region or for a designated group in the church (military).  They oversee the ministries and organize the church to respond to more significant needs than the resources of a particular community. 
 
 
Expanded reading from Romans (8: 31-39 
“What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us.  Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.  What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: “For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.”  No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. “ 
 
The verses that preceded the selection for mass today help set the stage.  Paul presents a courtroom scene and emphasizes that God, the judge is on our side, Christ, who died for us, is on our side, and two weeks ago, the Spirit was shown as interceded through us and for us. 
Can any of God’s creatures then be working against us?  The only thing that can stop God’s love is our refusal of it.  God is working for our good. 
 
Themes 

• God’s Providence
• God’s care for each person
• The Power of God’s care

Reflection Questions 

1. How have you experienced God’s abundant generosity in your life?  What helps you remember how many blessings are available to you?
2. How connected do you feel to the community of believers?  What could help you feel more part of a parish or of the church?
3. How do you bring your Christian life into your relationships and activities?
4. What obstacles have diverted God’s love from renewing and strengthen you?
5. What can you do be more open to letting God’s love into your life? 

Trust in the Lord

This Sunday we will hear the wonderful story of Jesus walking on water. This miraculous event is mainly what we will remember, together with Peter sinking into the water when he tried the same thing. But there is another very interesting spiritual dimension that I would like to suggest.

What do you think was going on in Jesus’ own heart and soul during these events?

Remember the Gospel from last Sunday? Jesus did preach to the multitude and miraculously feed them, but he had wanted to be by himself to tend to his grief. He had just been told of the death of John the Baptist and it hit him hard. He had gotten into a boat and had rowed to what he thought would be a deserted place. But the crowd got there first and instead of quiet time for prayer and grief, Jesus had hour after hour of healing and curing.

Then comes the story for this Sunday. Jesus finally sends the crowd away. But besides that, he does one other thing that is very telling: he “made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side” (Matthew 14:22). He still wants to be alone. He wants to process the death of John the Baptist. He goes up on the mountainside to pray.

It is by now evening, Matthew tells us, and Jesus prays into the night, even with gusty wind coming up. I wonder what his prayer was like?

He had studied the scriptures since his youth. Is it too fanciful to think that the story in our First Reading came into his mind? There the prophet Elijah too was up on a mountain-side, and there too, a heavy wind came up. The Lord was not in the wind, we are told in the reading. Nor in the earthquake that followed. Nor in the fire that came next. The Lord God was in the “tiny whispering sound” that followed. A better translation is “a still, small voice.”

This his how God speaks most often. In the quiet moment of grace, in the gentle assurance that we are not alone even in the face of tragedy, in the joy of knowing that love lives.

Sometimes the voice of God whispers so softly that you or I do not hear it.

But Jesus on the mountaintop heard. His great trust in his Abba ( = daddy, much loved parent) opened his ears. Perhaps Abba assured him that a human being has to rely on God even against the evidence, even when it seems that tragedy has the upper hand. This is not a blind trust, but a quiet memory of God’s faithful love even when events like death seem to contradict it. It appears to be counter-intuitive. Does death support belief in God any more than water supports human footsteps?

But Jesus does walk on water. Peter loses hope and starts to sink. Let this lesson be ours as we worship this Sunday. We only start to sink when we lose our trust in the source of hope and love and promise. Listen. Remember.

First Reading 
1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a 
 
1. Some of us have to have a “great wind, earthquake, or fire” in our lives before we look for God. But do you ever take time to listen for the “tiny whispering sound”? If you created a quiet time in your life each day could you do this?  
 
 2. Discuss all the traces of God you find in your life, or the ways God can/does speak to you. When is it easiest to hear? When in your life is it the hardest? At the end of the day do you ask yourself when you saw these traces? 
 
 
Second Reading 
Romans 9:1-5,  
 
1. Paul is in “great sorrow and constant anguish” because some of his own people have not accepted the fact that the Messiah has come. What do you do when your loved ones reject some beliefs that are important to you? 
 
2. What would be a good way to handle “great sorrow and constant anguish? Scream at the people causing it? Show them love? Pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance for them and you?  
 
  
Gospel 
Matthew 14:22-23 
 
1. How is living with this environmental crisis + the Ukraine war + racial problems similar to the raging sea Peter was trying to walk on toward Jesus? What do you think would have helped Peter keep walking? Ignore the wind? Keep his eyes on Jesus? What might help you now? 
 
 2. Instead of looking at Peter’s desperate cry for help as shameful, why does Pope Francis say it is a beautiful prayer for everyone?

This Gospel narrative is an invitation to abandon ourselves trustingly to God in every moment of our life, especially in the moment of trial and turmoil. When we have strong feelings of doubt and fear and we seem to be sinking, in life’s difficult moments where everything becomes dark, we must not be ashamed to cry out like Peter: “Lord, save me” (v. 30). To knock on God’s heart, on Jesus’s heart. “Lord, save me.” It is a beautiful prayer! We can repeat it many times. “Lord, save me.” And Jesus’s gesture, who immediately reaches out His hand and grasps that of His friend, should be contemplated at length: this is Jesus. Jesus does this. Jesus is the Father’s hand who never abandons us, the strong and faithful hand of the Father, who always and only wants what is good for us. … Jesus wanted to teach this to Peter and the disciples, and also to us today. In dark moments, in sad moments He is well aware that our faith is weak –all of us are people of little faith, all of us, myself included, everyone – and that our faith is weak our journey can be troubled, hindered by adverse forces. But He is the Risen One! Let’s not forget this: He is the Lord who passed through death in order to lead us to safety.  
 
Pope Francis Angelus 19th Sun A 
Aug 9, 2020

Pre-Prayering

We pray these days as people on a journey. We are one form of God’s really being present. We have eaten of the Bread of Life, Jesus, both in the Eucharist and in our acceptance of him as the One Who Has Been Sent.

We pray for God’s accompanying us as we meet resistance to our own goodness and that of God. We pray for the gentle touch of the Eucharist in our hand and on our tongues which encourages us to get up, keep going, and show up for tomorrow. We may also pray not to argue about religion and religious beliefs, but live them convincingly.

Reflection

To understand Elijah’s journey and why he just wanted to die, one must read the previous chapter to the one from which our First Reading is taken. Elijah is being chased for good reasons by Jezebel and Ahab who have killed all the other prophets of Israel. Elijah in his turn has proven the prophets of Baal, who is a “god of fertility,” to be no god at all. That little piece of action you must read and enjoy in chapter eighteen (see 1 Kings 18). He has mocked their god and then slaughters all one hundred and fifty false prophets. They played for keeps in those days.

So Elijah is on the run, making for the mountain of the covenant. We see him exhausted, frustrated, and ready to quit. An angel wakes him and urges him to eat and drink; he does this twice. He then gets up and journeys for forty days and forty nights before arriving at Horeb.

What we read today is the deep listening which Elijah experienced while resting and hiding in a cave.

The Gospel begins with a dismissal of the crowds after the multiple feeding. Afterwards the disciples leave this kind of liturgy as well, and Jesus stays back to pray. It is quiet there, but out on the sea there is a storm and the disciples are in fearful trouble. It is a perfect learning time.

Jesus comes toward them walking on the water and the disciples cry out in fear. Jesus does the words of consecration, “It is I, do not be afraid.” Peter, who often puts his foot in his mouth does it again and Jesus invites him to put his foot on the water and “come.”

Peter responds eagerly, but gets a sinking feeling and Jesus catches him up and back into the boat where the others “of little faith” are awestruck and making the profound act of affirmation and faith, “Truly you are the son of God.”

There are the themes of call and of fearfulness in today’s readings. Elijah and Peter both hear the call within their fear and fragility. Elijah hears something just loud enough to be from God and yet not so loud as to be false. Elijah will have to leave the security of the cave and go back to face the music. He is at Horeb where the covenant with Moses was concluded. God asks Elijah why he is there. Elijah bewails the breaking down of the covenanted faith within Israel. God tells him to go back and continue his work of being a prophet of the covenant.

Then in the Gospel, Peter hears the call, responds, and it seems that Jesus fails him, tricks him. Peter has faith, but fears as well. It seems that whenever Peter has a failure, Jesus reveals to Peter and the Gospel readers, ever more clearly who Jesus is for those who can find faith within their fears. In the holy scriptures it seems that revelation takes place within the dramatic context of human and personal timidity and poverty.

I was just sitting here thinking and I heard a little fellow outside call out his friend’s name four times. Finally the lad shouted, “Come out and play!” What I heard next was, “Why not, are you afraid!” Really, that just happened. A call, a response and a reaction all within ten seconds!

I have witnessed two weddings in the past three weeks. Let’s talk about fear and faith being wedded. Walking down aisles is like walking on water. Commitment, covenant are formed from the tiny wee voice of love and faith which allows fears to make loud noises. Often the earthquakes and thunders are all we hear, but faith needs doubt to be real and in time God grasps us enough to hear his voice saying “Be not afraid.” I did not say to the trembling couples, “O you of little faith, why are you doubting?” They might say in response, “Easy for you to say, you are not getting married.” I wish it had been recorded that Peter responded, “Why? Because I was drowning and it didn’t look like you were going to do anything about it.” The only sure thing about the unknown is that we don’t know it.

John’s Gospel says that love casts out fear. That sounds good enough. Fear and doubt are appropriately human and so embraced by the love of the Creating God. I recall lying on the floor of Gesu Church in Milwaukee during the mass of my ordination to Christ’s priesthood. There was the singing of a long litany, but not quite long enough. I remember thinking, “If I had only a little more time, I’d be absolutely sure.” The singing ended, but not the unsureness. Thirty-nine years have past, but still there is the gift of doubt and fear which make commitment and fidelity a simple gift of mine to God. He drags me often into his boat of affirmation which lasts a while until the next big set of waves gives me that same sinking feeling. “You of little faith” is not a condemnation, but the context for Jesus becoming Lord and the Sender.

The Prayer of Helplessness

But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught Peter, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

In her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day shares how she once prayed at a very low time in her life.

Dorothy Day, as you know, wasn't raised into the faith, but came to it on her own after a certain romance with atheism. An intellectual, moving in Marxist and anti-church circles, she entered her twenties convinced that if anyone had the courage to look life square in the eye, she or he would not believe in God. She had support in that. The love of her life at the time was a man who shared her views. She moved in with him and bore his child outside of marriage. The birth of this child, a daughter, changed her in ways she had not foreseen. Holding her infant daughter, she was so overcome with awe and gratitude that she prayed spontaneously: "For so much joy, I need to thank someone!" Her faith was born from that, from the purest spring of all, gratitude.

She took some instructions, was baptized, and became a Christian. The father of her child, upset by the change in her, warned that if she had their child baptized he would leave her. Her daughter was baptized and he did leave her. Many of her friends reacted similarly. So, even as she was buoyed-up by her new-found faith, she found herself very much alone, without most of her former friends and support-systems, a single-mother, living on her own, lacking money, and without any practical vision of what she should now do with her life.

She floundered like this for awhile, feeling ever more lonely and unsure of herself. One day she couldn't take it any more. She left her young daughter in the care of friends and took a train to Washington, D.C., where she spent the day praying at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Her prayer that day was one of utter helplessness. In essence she said to God: "I've given up a lot for you, and you haven't done anything for me! I'm lost, alone, unsure of what to do, and running out of energy and patience. I need help - need it now, not in some distant future! Help me! Help me now! I can't go on like this!"

When she got back to New York that night and walked up to her apartment, a man was sitting on the steps waiting for her. He told her he had heard about her, had an idea, and he needed her help. He then explained to her the concept of "The Catholic Worker". The man's name was Peter Maurin and the rest is history. From that moment on, she had a vision for her life.

Not everyone gets so quick and clear an answer in prayer, although more people than you would suspect have similar stories. Martin Luther King, for instance, shares how he once prayed at a low-point in his life:

"One night toward the end of January, I settled into bed late, after a strenuous day. Coretta had already fallen asleep and just as I was about to doze off the telephone rang. An angry voice said, `Listen, nigger, we've taken all we want from you, before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.' I hung up, but I couldn't sleep. It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point.

I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory:

`I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.'

At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before." (MLK, Stride Towards Freedom)

Christina Crawford, commenting on a low-point in her life, says: "Lost is a place too!" She's right. And lost is the place from where we are especially invited to pray. When we hurt all over, live in a shame we can't bear, and are on our knees because we're too weak to stand, we're in the perfect posture for prayer. God hears prayers of helplessness. Lost is a place too!

 

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: dismiss the crowds, buy food for themselves, give them some food yourselves, are all we have, Bring them here to me, he said the blessing, all … were satisfied.

To the point: The disciples ask Jesus to dismiss the crowds so they can buy food. Jesus tells them simply to “give them food yourselves.” But the disciples cannot satisfy the crowds' hunger until they give Jesus all they have—a meager five loaves and two fish. Jesus blesses these gifts and returns them to the disciples who then have enough to feed the crowds, even with “fragments left over.” It is not the meager resources we have that count, but what Jesus can do with these resources when we give all we have to him.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: Come! Come! Come! So compellingly and urgently does God invite us to a feast of rich fare that God provides freely and without cost. Come!

… to experience: Marketing is always playing on our appetites—eat this! buy that! get more! Marketing offers us the false hope of satisfaction. True satisfaction comes only from our giving what we have to God who returns it to us in abundance.

The Higher Love

What will separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35).

For the longest time I misread the meaning of Paul’s passage on the love of Christ. It was the “of” that threw me. I took it to mean our love of God, not God’s love of us. Thus, trial or persecution or threats should not shake our love. No creature should come between us and our love for God, no power should overcome us. Love, in this reading, was a task to do, an achievement to be strived for. Our faith was a noble task of steadfast love on our part.

It is quite clear, however, that Paul is saying something else: nothing in existence can ever separate us from the love that God, revealed in Jesus, has for us. Not only does the first interpretation miss the boat by focusing on our attitudes and desires; it fosters one of the most persistent mistakes about our faith. Christian faith is not primarily about something we do for God. It is about what God does for and in us. It is not so much an account of human aspiration as it is a revelation of divine desire.

The covenant that Isaiah promised to David’s progeny could not be bought or earned. It was there for the taking, like water for the thirsty to drink. It was the gift of food that need not be purchased, wine and milk without cost. All we need do is accept the offer.

This could be troubling. Does it mean that we don’t have to work at all? Is our faith effortless? Are our actions, good or sinful, inconsequential in the eyes of God?

It certainly seems not. After all, the dragnet parable about the reign of God from this week’s longer gospel reading suggests that we humans perform both good and evil acts.

More troubling still, it seems that at the end of the world there will be a host of angels who will separate the wicked from the just and cast the wicked into a fire, where they will grind their teeth. That statement sounds as though we actually can be separated from the love of God. It also sounds scary.

What’s going on here? Is it possible that the refusal of the gift, the rejection of God’s love, can separate us? Is faith in the promise, hope in the covenant, acceptance of the love, the work we must do, the only effort we must make to avoid damnation? Of that I’m not sure; it raises the awesome question whether anyone is eternally lost.

But I do believe the words of the psalmist suggest an answer: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his deeds. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.”

Jesus, his heart moved by compassion, cured the sick. More tellingly, when his disciples wanted to dismiss the pressing crowd to search for food, he told his followers to offer their own food freely. Five loaves and two fish fed thousands, the fragments filling twelve bushels. Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Somewhere in the mystery of God is an unlimited bounty, whether it makes sense to us or not. This God we meet in Jesus just does not work according to our ways. It may not make for good business, it may even be bad law, but whatever else it is, it seems to be God’s way of loving.

Commentary by Ephrem

They all ate and were satisfied. (Mt 14:20)

Our Lord in a desert place changed a few loaves into many, and at Cana turned water into wine. Thus before the time came to give men and women his own body and blood to feed on, he accustomed their palates to his bread and wine, giving them a taste of transitory bread and wine to teach them to delight in his life-giving body and blood.

He gave them things of little value for nothing to make them understand that his supreme gift would be given yet more freely. He gave them for nothing what they could have bought from him, what in fact they wanted to buy, to teach them that he asked them for no payment.

When it was not permitted them to give him the price of bread and wine, which they could have done, they certainly could not pay him for his body and blood.

Moreover, as well as giving freely he lovingly cajoled us, offering us these small things without charge to attract us and cause us to go and receive something greater and beyond all price.

He awakened our desire by things pleasing to the palate in order to draw us to that which gives life to the soul. He gave a sweet taste to the wine he created to show how great is the treasure hidden in his life-giving blood.

Consider how his creative power penetrates everything. Our Lord took a little bread, and in the twinkling of an eye multiplied it. Work that would take us ten months to accomplish he did with his ten fingers in a moment.

His hands were as earth beneath the bread and his voice was as thunder above it. The movement of his lips acted as dew, the breath of his mouth as sunlight, and in a brief moment he accomplished what normally takes much time.

Thus the shortage was forgotten; many loaves came from few as in the flrst blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

The Lord also showed those to whom he gave his precepts the power of his holy word, and how swiftly he would reward those who accepted it. Nevertheless, he did not increase the number of loaves as much as he could have done, but only enough to satisfy those who were to eat them.

His power was not the measure of his miracle, but the people’s hunger. Had his miracle been measured by his power it would have been a victory beyond all measure. Measured by the hunger of thousands, there was a surplus of twelve baskets full.

Humans who practice any craft always fall short of their customers’ desires—they are unable to meet their requirements; but what God does goes beyond anyone’s desire.

The Lord said: “Gather up what remains so that nothing is wasted” because he wanted to be sure they would not think they had seen a vision. When the fragments had been kept for a day or two they would believe the Lord had really done this, and they had not just imagined it.

Diatessaron 12, 1.3-5: CSCO 145
Scriptores Armeniaci, t. 2, 115-117

Ephrem (c.306-373), the only Syrian Father who is honored as a doctor of the Church, was ordained deacon at Edessa in 363, and gave an outstanding example of a deacon’s life and work.

Most of his exegetical, dogmatic, controversial, and ascetical writings are in verse. They provide a rich mine of information regarding the faith and practice of the early Syrian Church. The poetry of Ephrem greatly influenced the development of Syriac and Greek hymnography.

Walking on Water

Each of the gospel authors has his own distinctive and consistent way of telling the story of Jesus. The episode about the walking on the water is one of the best passages for demonstrating how purposeful and meaningful those variations can be. Take a moment and read carefully first Mark's account (Mk 6:45-52) and then Matthew's (Mt 14:22-33). Did you notice that Matthew's version is about 50 percent longer (the three and a half verses devoted to Peter's failed effort to walk on water)?

And did you notice the completely opposite reactions of the disciples? In Mark's version, when Jesus gets into the boat and the wind dies down, they are astounded, and Mark observes, “They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened” (Mk 6:52). In Matthew's version, on the other hand, after Jesus rescues Peter and both get into the boat and the wind dies down, “those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’” (Mt 14:32). In Mark's version, the disciples are not enlightened by this experience. In Matthew's version, however, they worship (that is the meaning of prosekynesan) Jesus and collectively confess him to be “the Son of God”—something the disciples never come to recognize in the whole gospel of Mark.

Each of these different reactions is consistent with the presentation of the disciples in its respective gospel. In Mark, the twelve consistently fail to understand Jesus’ teaching. Indeed, in connection with another reference to bread, their behavior prompts Jesus to ask, “Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?” (Mk 8:17-18). But in Matthew's version of the conversation, Jesus does not make that critique; indeed, in Matthew they do understand about the bread (see Mt 16:12). Mark, throughout his Gospel, pictures the disciples as spiritually blind. Pointedly, Mark frames the instruction of the disciples in chapters 8 through 10 with the two cures from blindness; what the blind man of Bethsaida and blind Bartimaeus receive physically, the disciples need on the spiritual level: they fail to see that Jesus' messsiahship entails suffering.

On the other hand, Matthew consistently presents the disciples as understanding quite well; their problem is that they have little faith. In the walking-on-the-water episode, the portrait of Peter illustrates exactly that point. In the incident of the storm at sea, Jesus had berated them as being “of little faith” (Mt 8:25). If there is any uncertainty as to whether this doubting of the disciples is a special theme of Matthew’s, it becomes quite clear in the final scene of his Gospel, the appearance of the risen Lord to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee. Matthew describes that encounter in a startling sentence: “When they saw him, they worshiped [prosekynesan], but they doubted [edistasan]” (Mt 28:17). Notice that the word translated "worshiped" here is the same as the word translated “did him homage” describing the disciples’ response in the water-walk scene. Equally significant, the word for “doubted” is precisely the word for Peter's doubt used in Jesus' question after he rescues the sinking man. To say that at the appearance of the risen Lord, “they worshiped, but they doubted” sounds so contradictory that most translations (e.g., KJV, Rheims, NIV, and NRSV) say "they worshiped but some doubted." But the NAB (1986) accurately reflects the Matthean text, a mix of faith and doubt already represented in the rescue episode of this Sunday's Gospel.

Apparently Matthew boldly addresses the shaky faith life of his readership. Like his portrait of the disciples, they have a fine understanding of Jesus and his teaching. They just need to trust in the risen Lord sufficiently to put that understanding fully into action.

Would Matthew’s address to us be any different?

 

I Do Believe

Sunday’s Gospel can give a headache to preachers and to any Christian. Jesus refuses to heal a woman because she is, in his metaphor, one of the “dogs.”

You know the story. A Canaanite woman cries out for help and Jesus at first will not even talk to her! Then the disciples demand that Jesus send her away because she is a trouble-maker. He seems to agree with them. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says.

Finally the poor woman walks right up, does “homage” to Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.”

Jesus would never ignore such words, at least so we Christians and Catholics believe. Nor should we ever be deaf to them in our own daily lives.

Yet he says to her, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

Ouch. This is the line that is so hard for us to explain. So un-Jesus-like, it seems.

But there are clues. She first called out to him with the words “Son of David.” This is a term hallowed by use in the ancient Hebrew scriptures, always referring to the Messiah. She is a Canaanite, and they had no Messiah, especially not from David. This woman seems to have belief in Jesus.

And she calls him “Lord.” In Matthew’s gospel this is an explicit admission that Jesus and God are one. Going just on her language, she must have believed in him as the Savior.

Surely he sensed this.

But Israel and the Canaanites had long been in strife. How could “they” with their strange gods produce a woman who believes in the one God and in Jesus?

Is it possible that Jesus was drawing her out, teasing her in order to strengthen her belief?

Perhaps he was quoting the word “dogs” as a reference to names the two peoples called each other. “My people of Israel believe in the one God and your people do not. How can I give their food to you ‘dogs’?”

The woman’s quick wit provides a wonderful, humble, bantering response that wins the day: “Even dogs eat scraps that fall from their master’s table.” It is a riposte, a parry, a counter-thrust, and Jesus loves it. She is really saying, “It does not matter what a person’s status is as long as they believe. And I do believe.”

I’ll bet Jesus smiled a great smile as he told her how great her faith was. Maybe he laughed at her fast repartee. And of course he gladly gave her what she asked; he cured her daughter.

Doesn’t Christ’s Holy Spirit smile within you and me when we ask for what we need? When we let nothing stand in the way, like our own origins, our status in life, our sins, and maybe even our rejection by others?

We approach Communion and hold out our hands and say in effect, “Son of David, have pity on me.” Our response is “Amen.” This is a paraphrase of the Canaanite woman, because it means “I do believe.” Let us mean it this Sunday.

First Reading 
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7  
 
1. “Observe what is right, do what is just.” Is Isaiah telling us to look at situations in our lives, discern what is right, and take action to change what needs to be changed? Are today’s crises–– racial, economic and environmental–– offering us opportunities to discern and become prophets of change? 
 
2. “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Is God’s house open to just some people or all people? Did the chosen folks have to wrestle with that idea? Today, does racial bias relate to this problem? What is the message in this reading––to go find the excluded and bring them in?  
 
 
Second Reading 
Romans 11:13-15, 29-32 
 
1. “The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”  According to this statement of St. Paul, will there ever be a change in God’s mind, to stop loving us? “Even if we are faithless he is faithful, because he cannot deny himself.” (2 Tim. 2:13) Explain. 
                                  
2. St. Paul says that the Israelites disobeyed yet received mercy; the Gentiles disobeyed and received it too. Mercy is a profound characteristic of God. Where do you see mercy in today’s world? How can you show mercy?  
  
 
Gospel 
Matthew 15:21-28 
 
1. What is it about her statement, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters,” that prompts Jesus to grant her request? During this conversation, do you think he might have understood his mission from his Father better, that his Father’s gift of divine life was for all people, as in the First Reading?                      
 
2. What does Pope Francis say the Canaanite woman teaches us when she cried, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!”?  
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (v. 26). And right away, the woman, quick, anguished, responds: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (v. 27). 

And with these words, that mother shows that she has perceived the goodness of the Most High God present in Jesus who is open to any of His creatures necessities. And this wisdom, filled with trust, touches Jesus’s heart and provokes words of admiration: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” (v. 28). What type of faith is great? Great faith is that which brings its own story, marked even by wounds, and brings it to the Lord’s feet asking Him to heal them, to give them meaning. 
Each one of us has our own story… Many times it is a difficult story, with a lot of pain, many misfortunes and many sins. What do I do with my story? Do I hide it? No! We must bring it before the Lord. “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!” This is what this woman teaches us… 
Angelus 20th Sun Ord A 

Pre-Prayering

Robert Frost, the wonderful American Poet, once wrote how a little dust of snow, shaken by a crow from the branch of a hemlock tree, fell lightly upon him and changed his mood of a day he thought he had ruined.

It is quite amazing how little things can switch on and off the brightness of our spirits. A smile or frown can lift or lower our beliefs in the goodness of humankind. A phone call or lack thereof can make us want to get up and out, or lock us down.

The Eucharist is a “Missioning Service.” He gave his life for us, then to us, and then sent His followers, and sends us, to light up this world. As we prepare for next Sunday’s in-person or virtual weekend liturgy, we can pray with the graces and lights which come to us as so many little sacraments.

We can pray as well with the joy we experience as others receive life and joy by our presence. He came that we might have life. When we leave a person or place, may it be said too, “he/she came that we might have life and we certainly have had more than before she/he came.”

Reflection

Often in the Scriptures there is the tension or theme concerning who belongs and who does not. Jesus Himself stood in the middle of this tension all of His public life. Israel jealously protected its sanctity as God’s holy people, by excluding anyone from outside its borders; they were the “foreigners.” They were to be avoided, in some cases, not even to be looked at or spoken to.

In today’s First Reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear something new, quite different. These are the first verses of the third distinct section and author, hence the name, Third Isaiah. The promises of Second Isaiah have been fulfilled. The people of Israel have been freed from their exile and have returned to their holy land and especially their re-consecrated temple. Now there is to be a new way of living faithfully the Covenant of the Lord.

“Let the immigrants in!” “Do not exclude the foreigners!” The prophet is calling the people to embrace those who honor the one God, the Lord of the Covenant. If those new comers from other religions observe the holy customs, especially the Sabbath, then God’s justice will be revealed to all of the people. They are welcomed by God and are to be welcomed by God’s people even into the holy Temple.

Within the Temple in Jerusalem was the holy of holies. Few were allowed to enter there. What is beginning through this reading is that the holiness of God was being extended into the holiness of the people of Israel and further to those whom God was attracting to be a new kind of Israel.

The Gospel can make Jesus and his disciples look quite guilty of prejudice and selective charity. A non-Jewish woman, that is a foreigner, from the ancient enemy of the Jews, calls to Jesus for help with her sick daughter.

Usually we see Jesus responding quickly and with great compassion. Here is something unusual: Jesus turns his back on her. His disciples ask him to grant her request and send her away, she is a bother. So there is tension.

Jesus makes his statement according to Matthew’s basic theme that Jesus is sent first to recall, recover, rededicate the people of Israel. They are the lost sheep. The woman makes a gesture of faith in him to which he replies, continuing the theme. He has come to feed the Jews and not feed the little pests of other houses.

She turns Jesus’ words back on him. Perhaps she could be like a little puppy and just have a scrap. Jesus, seeing her faith, the same faith to which Jesus is inviting his Jewish family, grants her request. The daughter who was possessed by a demon has now been healed through an act of faith.

Each of us has our own boundaries and we have constructed our own walls between us. Those we have allowed in through our own Ellis Islands, and those we exclude, because, hmmm, why?

I grew up in an all white, all Irish, all Catholic neighborhood. I did not know anybody who looked or thought differently from our true and authentic family way. I did not even know there were boundaries. There were just others over there who didn’t matter. They were not wrong, they were not worthy of judging. Jesus was ours and I honestly thought he was quite Irish.

Politically, there are many sides to the story. As followers of Jesus there is the inside where he has welcomed us and he has welcomed “those others” as well. Each of us is invited to be, in our turn, a spiritual Ellis Island who is open for life.

The Tyranny of Program

He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

During my graduate studies in Louvain, I had the good fortune of having Cristianne Brusselmanns as a professor. Many will recognize that name and recognize as well the pivotal role this woman played in restoring the adult rite of initiation (RCIA) in the West. Cristine was an exceptional teacher, one-in-a-million, who radiated catholicity, graciousness, and depth. One of the things she would say again and again about the restored rite for adult initiation, was that it was not meant as the only way of entering the church. It was meant only as a way, an ideal way even, but never, never as the only way. God, she would always affirm, works outside of even good program. Sadly, we have fallen a long ways from both her catholicity and depth.

Today we are falling victim, I fear, to a new authoritarianism in the church, the tyranny of program. It may look different from the old authoritarianism, but it is not. Many of us remember only too well the days when all the power was concentrated in the hands of one man, the pastor, and where his ecclesiology, interpretation of church law, temperament, and whim pretty much decided everything. The oral tradition abounds with stories (both horrific and humorous) of the classical, old pastor or monsignor who ruled with an iron hand and by divine right.

But that kind of authoritarianism is now mostly the stuff of legends. Gone are the old pastor and monsignor of who could do this. There is a new church, though it seems that things haven't changed much. People are still too much the victim of one narrow view of ecclesiology and church law. Sadly too temperament and whim still play a large a role in deciding who enters the church, how one enters the church, and who gets to receive the sacraments. The old patriarchy has largely been replaced by a new absolutism, the tyranny of good program. A narrow authoritarianism still rules, except now it is the authoritarianism of the parish staff, freshly-trained in theology and liturgy but is not nearly as deeply schooled in catholicity and compassion. The absolutism of the new parish staff has replaced the authoritarianism of the old monsignor.

It can of course be argued that the parish staff of today is  certainly operating out of a better ecclesiology and theology of liturgy and sacraments than did the authoritarian monsignor of old. Point granted. However: Is Christ being made more accessible? Is our ecclesiology healthier in its Catholicity, depth, and compassion? Are many of the poor still being excluded from church and sacrament because of our misuse of power? Is a false use of authority still blocking the full compassion of the gospel and giving God a bad name? Are there really less horror stories than before?

Certainly new horror stories abound: "I wasn't allowed to join the church in this parish and diocese, except through one program, the RCIA." "There will be no eulogy at a funeral in this parish or diocese (no matter how painful the anthropological and emotional circumstances in this particular instance) because the funeral liturgy is complete in and off itself!" "All parents must take the pre-baptism program, even if they themselves have helped instruct those who teach these programs!" "No hymn that isn't approved by the parish team will be sung a wedding in this parish, irrespective of background (religious, aesthetic, ethnic, and emotional) of the couple who are actually getting married!" The list goes on and on.

A new legalism is replacing the old and it parallels perfectly the old in its lack of compassion, catholicity, depth, and nuance - not mention how, just like the old, it echoes the personality of the person or persons who are doing the adjudication.

We might all take a lesson in catholicity and good pastoral theology from the incident in the gospels where Jesus is confronted by a Canaanite woman, asking that he cure her daughter. Transliterated, this text, Matthew 15, 21-28 might read like this:

It was the night of the Easter vigil. Jesus had just helped to conduct an eight-month RCIA program and was helping set up things for the candidates who were to be baptized at the vigil liturgy, when I woman, who hadn't taken the program, came up to him and said: "Jesus, leader of this RCIA program, I would like to be baptized tonight, with these others." Jesus replied: "You never took the program! This is only for those who took it. It isn't fair to them to baptize you!" But the woman addresses Jesus a second time: "Jesus, you who are the compassion of God for the world and not just for this parish and program, I'm as ready as all those who did take the program!" And Jesus, after interviewing her, right then and there, concludes: "Amen. Indeed you are more ready than any of the candidates scheduled for baptism tonight. Step into line and be baptized ... even though you didn't take the program!" There's a lesson here.

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• tormented by a demon
• Jesus did not say a word
• keeps calling out
• great is your faith
• daughter was healed

To the point: The Canaanite woman in the Gospel refuses to be rebuffed even by the exclusionary and harsh words of Jesus. Nothing gets in the way of her seeking healing for her daughter “tormented by a demon. The woman “keeps calling out” to Jesus because she wants him to remove the demon—to remove the evil that separates. Her great faith moves Jesus to grant her request. Faith, by nature, is persistent. Persistence, by nature, is single-minded. Single-mindedness, by nature, achieves the end it seeks. Like the woman in the Gospel seeking healing for her daughter, our faith must be great enough to overcome barriers, must focus persistently on Jesus, and must bear the fruit of salvation and healing for others.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: What was for Isaiah a vision and future possibility—namely, all peoples will be drawn together in worship of God—is realized in the ministry of Jesus as a foreign woman comes with great faith to seek healing and offer him homage.
… to experience: All of us struggle with persistence—in prayer, in good works, with any spiritual discipline. The gospel woman reminds us that sometimes the sheer persistence can be the prayer, the good work, the spiritual discipline.

That Woman Is Ourselves

Mark calls her “a Greek” but Matthew uses the ancient name “Canaanite,” a reference to the original inhabitants of the Holy Land, who were conquered by the Israelites some twelve centuries before the time of Jesus. Matthew recognizes that this encounter between the woman from the area of Tyre and Sidon and Jesus is about an outsider “want­ing in.” So he heightens the drama by identifying her as a member of that group of pagans who were Israel’s first enemies (after the Egyp­tians, of course). Notwithstanding her status as “Canaanite,” her anxi­ety about her demonized daughter brings her to Jesus with a plea that he heal her.

Matthew turns her into a model of Christian prayer when he amends Mark's version to have her say, “Have mercy on me. Lord, Son of David.” Again revising Mark, Matthew introduces a startling response by Jesus: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (for this indeed was his way of operating during his earthly ministry, the Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations coming only later [Matt 28:19]). When she insists, again modeling Jewish-Christian prayer, “Lord help me,” Jesus goes so far as to use a popular insult term for Gentiles: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” In turn, the woman has the blessed hutzpah to make a witty play on Jesus’ image: “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Notice that she just ad­dressed Jesus as “master” (Kyrie). “O woman,” he responds, “Great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

We rightly marvel at the faith of the woman, and we wonder at the abrupt words of Jesus. But when we ask the question of why Matthew, and Mark before him, saw fit to include this account in their Gospels, it becomes evident that they, especially Matthew, had other concerns than ours. For Matthew's introduction of the reference about Jesus' mission to the house of Israel echoes the theme of Israel-first-then-the-nations developed elsewhere in his Gospel (see Mt 10:5-6 and 28:19).

Today's first reading, from Isaiah 56, helps us appreciate that larger picture which Matthew made his own. Isaiah envisions foreigners coming to the Jerusalem Temple to “join themselves to the Lord” and to “make joyful” in God's house. This joining of foreigners in the worship of Israel is not something that occurred upon Israel's return from the Exile. Indeed there were laws against pagans even stepping into the inner court of the Temple. This oracle referred to something beyond what the returning Judahites were ready for. That is why the prophecy could so readily be understood as a reference to messianic end-times. Indeed, the vision climaxes with words that Jesus quotes on the occa­sion of his cleansing of the Temple toward the end of his mission: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Jesus' an­nouncement of the kingdom of God signaled the end of business as usual, and an opening of the heritage of Israel to the rest of the world.

That's where we come in—that vast majority of us Christians who are Gentiles. However we understand the mainstream Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah—and the reading from Romans 11 shows that this question preoccupied Paul greatly—the fact is that Christian faith has its roots in Judaism and understands Jesus as implementing the voca­tion of Israel to be a light to the world. It would be a salutary help toward humility if we let the account of the Canaanite woman remind us that if we have found healing in the house of Jesus, it is only because we are foreigners who have been allowed to come in from the outside.

All Equal, Each Unique

That ancient problem of the one and the many has taken a million shapes. It is seen in the battle of change with continuity, the clash of novelty with permanence, the claims of individuality versus universality.

The conflict also appears in passages of scripture that contrast the particularities of Judaism or Christianity with the universality of God. Isaiah announced a God whose salvation and justice would be open to aliens. “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Thus, the psalmist wrote that all nations would come to praise God. St. Paul, in his reconciling claims of Jew and Gentile, reminded the Romans that a more universal truth of God’s mercy is revealed in the failures of both.

Each of us must act out the drama of a single life alone. There is no understudy, no replacement in these matters.
Even the accounts of Jesus’ meetings with Gentiles balance the claims of inclusion and exclusion. He seems rather harsh to the Canaanite woman who seeks healing for her demon-possessed daughter. At first Jesus does not even respond, and his disciples nag him to dismiss her because of her stubborn shouts. When Jesus remarks that his mission is only to the lost sheep of Israel, the woman presses her point, not only begging more insistently for help, but rebutting his rejection. “Even the dogs eat the leavings that fall from their master’s tables.”

Although the issue of tribal and religious inclusion might be discussed here, especially in light of Isaiah’s promise of universalism and Paul’s appeal to Gentile and Jew, what might be more key about this story is the revelation of that common trait of all men and women which engages the healing power of Jesus.

It is the heart, the plea, the persistent hope. “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter is healed.

The Canaanite woman embodies the constant and universal quality that every human heart—Jew or Gentile, woman or man, slave or free—possesses. It was her and our own willingness to call out in faith. This power, slumbering in us all from the moment of our beginnings in our mothers’ wombs, whether ever actualized or not, is what each of us uniquely possesses and yet has in common with all the rest of us. From the time of Sarah and Abraham to Mary’s yes and Joseph’s word of trust, from Romans to rabbis, Africans to Indians, it is the endowment of our personhood that unites us all in our humanity. It is also what makes everyone of us singularly strategic in playing our particular life drama.

Human persons are endowed with the capacity to take possession of their lives and offer their lives in faith. This is what makes every man and woman wholly equal before the world and God.

Yet the universal blessing of our humanity is found only in individuals. Each of us must act out the drama of a single life alone. There is no understudy, no replacement in these matters. Our common gift is displayed in singular and particular beauty. Thus, the paradox of the one and the many is that the very gift that makes us all most alike makes each of us altogether unique.

Commentary by John Chrysostom

O woman, great is your faith!  (Mt 15:28).
The Canaanite woman whose daughter was tormented by a devil came to Christ begging his help. Most urgently she cried out: “Lord, have pity on me. My daughter is grievously tormented by a devil.”

Notice that the woman was a foreigner, a gentile, a person from outside the Jewish community. What was she then but a dog, unworthy to obtain her request? “It is not fair,” said the Lord, “to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.”

Now would you like proof that we shall gain more by praying ourselves than by asking others to pray for us?
Nevertheless, by perseverance she became worthy; for Christ not only admitted her to the same noble rank as the children, dog though she was, but he also sent her away with high praise, saying: “Woman, you have great faith. Let it be as you desire.”

Now when Christ says: “You have great faith,” you need seek no further proof of the woman’s greatness of soul. You see that an unworthy woman became worthy by perseverance.

Now would you like proof that we shall gain more by praying ourselves than by asking others to pray for us?

The woman cried out and “the disciples went to Christ and said: give her what she wants—she is shouting after us.” And he said to them: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But when the woman herself, still crying out, came to him and said, “that is true, sir, and yet the dogs eat what falls from their master’s table,” then he granted her request, saying, “let it be as you desire.”

Have you understood?

When the disciples entreated him the Lord put them off, but when the woman herself cried out begging for this favor he granted it.

And at the beginning, when she first made her request, he did not answer, but after she had come to him once, twice, and a third time, he gave her what she desired. By this he was teaching us that he had withheld the gift not to drive her away, but to make that woman’s patience an example for all of us.

Now that we have learned these lessons, let us not despair even if we are guilty of sin and unworthy of any favor. We know that we can make ourselves worthy by perseverance.

(Homily on Phil 1:18, 12-13: Bareille 5,495-496)

John Chrysostom (c.347-407) was born at Antioch and studied under Diodore of Tarsus, the leader of the Antiochene school of theology. After a period of great austerity as a hermit, he returned to Antioch where he was ordained deacon in 381 and priest in 386. From 386 to 397 it was his duty to preach in the principal church of the city, and his best homilies, which earned him the title “Chrysostomos” or “the golden-mouthed,” were preached at this time. In 397 Chrysostom became patriarch of Constantinople, where his efforts to reform the court, clergy, and people led to his exile in 404 and fmally to his death from the hardships imposed on him. Chrysostom stressed the divinity of Christ against the Arians and his full humanity against the Apollinarians, but he had no speculative bent. He was above all a pastor of souls, and was one of the most attractive personalities of the early Church.

Reading I: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7

This passage comes from Third Isaiah, the postexilic portion of that work. It is founded on the teaching of Second Isaiah, as the opening verse of the reading shows: it uses the same terms, “justice” and “righteousness.”

On the other hand, there is a new twist to these words: justice and righteousness are not exclusively Yhwh’s mighty acts in bringing this people out of exile but are demands upon human conduct. Third Isaiah thus gives a moralistic slant to the teaching of his mentor.

Verses 6-7 deal with an acute practical problem that arose after the return and the restoration of the Temple. Prior to the exile, foreigners had been allowed to perform certain functions in the Temple precincts. Ezekiel had objected to allowing uncircumcised foreigners around the place. Third Isaiah now stipulates the conditions under which they may serve: they must observe the Sabbath and keep the covenant, as far as it is applicable to non-Israelites.

This is not unqualified universalism. But it is, at least in a symbolic way, a prophecy foreshadowing the universalism of the gospel. It points to the time when the Temple of God will be a house of prayer for all people; it thus points forward to the effects of Christ’s redeeming work.

Mark, or the tradition before him, puts these words on Jesus’ lips as an interpretation of his cleansing of the temple (Mark 11:17). John further interprets that event by taking it as an act of prophetic symbolism, declaring the replacement of the old Temple by the temple of Jesus’ body (John 2:19-21). It is there that the text of Isaiah 56:7 comes to its final fulfillment.

This passage was chosen today because of the universalist implications of the episode of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel reading.

 
 
Responsorial Psalm: 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8

Psalm 67 combines thanksgiving for the harvest with prayer for continued blessings. It serves as an appropriate thanksgiving for the continuation of the benefits the Church enjoys and as a prayer for the spread of these benefits to all nations, in keeping with the universalist implications of the Old Testament reading and the Gospel.

 
Reading II: Romans 11:13-15, 29-32

This passage occurs toward the end of Paul’s discussion of Israel’s place in salvation history, the opening part of which we read last week. Paul believes that the pattern of salvation history will run like this: First, the gospel is proclaimed to Israel by the earliest apostles. But Israel rejects it, so Paul is called to proclaim it to the Gentiles. This step will provoke Israel to jealousy, and Israel will then hurry to gain acceptance before the End.

Paul’s view of salvation history causes difficulties for us today. For one thing, he expected the End to come very soon. He did not think in terms of several millennia of history.

Already Matthew was compelled to adjust the early Christian perspective on salvation history. He contemplated the failure and abandonment of the mission to Israel and, as a consequence, saw the necessity of concentrating in the future on the mission to the Gentiles.

Matthew did not hope, as Paul did, that Israel would be provoked to jealousy and would want to come in. This adjustment of perspective need not surprise us. As Cullmann has shown, it is characteristic of the understanding of salvation history in both the Old and the New Testaments that it should constantly be adjusted in the light of later events.

For us, what is of permanent validity in this passage is not Paul’s particular scheme of salvation history (which had to be corrected already by Matthew), but rather the great principle enunciated in Romans 11:29 and highlighted in the caption: the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. That must be the basic principle as we wrestle today with the place of Israel in salvation history.

 
Gospel: Matthew 15:21-28

Matthew took over the story of the Canaanite woman from Mark, but with several important changes:

1. The woman is called a Canaanite instead of a Syro-Phoenician.

2. There is considerable expansion of the dialogue material in the body of the story (Mt 15:22-24).

3. Jesus praises the woman for her faith (Mt 15:28).

4. Matthew removes Jesus’ saying that the children (that is, Israel) must be fed first.

5. The narrative of the woman’s return home to discover that her daughter was cured of the demon is reduced to a brief statement that the girl was indeed healed (unlike Mark, Matthew is not interested in the fact that the healing was performed from a distance).
It may well be that Matthew had access to an alternative version of the healing, perhaps a more primitive one (so Bultmann and Lohmeyer). In any case, Matthew’s alterations have a theological rather than a historical motivation. He shifts the interest away from the miracle to the woman’s faith.

As a Canaanite, she is a stranger to the covenants of Israel (see the Old Testament conflicts between Israel and Canaan). Jesus takes the barrier very seriously. He first refuses to answer her, then announces that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. It was the woman’s faith that finally overcame the barrier.

Mark and Matthew wrote for a different public at different periods. Mark wrote for Gentile Christians, showing them that salvation was first for the Jews only and then for the Gentiles. Matthew wrote for Jewish Christians, showing them that faith, and faith alone, breaks down the barrier between Jew and Gentile.

It Takes Two
On previous Sundays Jesus has been curing people. Yet an odd thing happens in each case. He tells them, “Your faith has saved you.” That creates a mystery. Quite obviously Jesus does the healing, so why does he say their faith did it? Why didn’t he just say “Go in peace, I have healed you"?

Let us seek the answer in Sunday’s Gospel. This will be a roundabout way to get at an answer, so I ask you to wait for it.

Jesus is in Caesarea Philippi and the disciples are just back from their mission of preaching. He asks them who people think he is.

The disciples laugh boyishly and repeat some answers they have heard. Obviously they regard these guesses as absurd. Something like this:

Believe it or not, some think you are John the Baptist returned from the dead!

The ones I talked to said you were the prophet Elijah! It was hilarious!

A few of them said you are Jeremiah or one of the other prophets! They just don’t know what to make of you.

Laughter all around.

But Jesus’ question was a curve ball and now it crosses the plate. He says abruptly, “And what about you? Who do you say I am?”

Eyes wander, feet scuff, laughter turns into a cough. The disciples’ faith is still young and perhaps they are confused about it, not to mention the fact that up to this point they have not been required to profess anything out loud. Red faces.

Peter is bold, awkwardly walking on water again, figuratively this time. He stammers out his best answer.

You … you are … the, uh, … yes, uh, the … the Son of … you are the Christ, the Son of the living God!

Silence and then nods and relief all around.

“Simon, how great is your faith,” Jesus says. “Whatever you open with this faith will stay open. Whatever your faith shuts will remain shut, not only here but in heaven.”

A high compliment to Peter’s tottering belief status.

But does this help with the contradiction we began with? Is it Jesus’ action or an act of their faith?

Jesus is always seeking a two-way liaison between himself and us, not just one-way. He wants us to have a relationship to the fullness of who he is. Besides being a charismatic leader or a good friend, he is the very reality of God’s love, present in the world, wide open to loving each of us—and being loved in return. He wants a mutual love-relationship with you and me, one in which we open up our hearts and let Godly love in—and return it.

The name of that openness to God’s love on the part of a person is “faith.”

Faith.

So the answer is truly, “your faith has saved you.” But it is faith in Jesus’ cures. These are never just a matter of him acting on his own, like a mechanic replacing spark plugs. They are love being given and love being received. The ones who were cured must have opened themselves and have at least a beginning relationship with Jesus as the loving Messiah.

Healing is then at last able to take root.

First Reading 
Isaiah 22:19-23 
 
1. The Isaiah reading says, “He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” How can the Church act as father in the present crises: wars, immigration, racial, environmental?  What other qualities or virtues do you look for in Church leadership, besides having a solid faith? 
 
2. “I will place the key of the House of David on Eliakim’s shoulder…” In the Gospel Jesus tells Peter he will give him the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What might those keys unlock? Love? The depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God? 
 
Second Reading 
Romans 11:33-36 
 
1. “For who has know the mind of the Lord?” Are you good at recognizing the Lord in your life? Are you able to know where God is leading you, or what God is doing in your life?  
 
2. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! …For from him and through him and for him are all things.” Every person, every race, every part of our environment comes from God. How can we thank or “give glory” to God for gifts such as these?  By loving? By protecting? 
 
Gospel 
Matthew 16:13-20 
 
1. To answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am,” you have to know him. Which of the following could help you know Jesus: 

• music by Vivaldi
• Michelangelo's David or Van Gogh’s Irises
• a good homily
• a good book
• good friends
• suffering
• joy
• meditation
• successes  
• weaknesses  
• family 
• flowers
• homeless people 
   
  Can you find (and get to know) God in all things? 
   
  2. When the disciples answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” they went from admiring Jesus to imitating him. They followed him. What do you think Pope Francis meant when he said that in following Jesus we are “looking ahead and welcoming the kairos (moments of) grace”?  

At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” …They had to take that decisive step, from admiring Jesus to imitating Jesus. Today too, the Lord looks at each of us personally and asks: “Who am I – in fact – for you?” Who am I for you? This question, addressed to each of us, calls for more than a quick answer straight out of the catechism; it requires a vital, personal response. 
That response renews us as disciples. It takes place in three steps, steps that the disciples took and that we too can take. It involves first, proclaiming Jesus; second, discerning with Jesus and third, following Jesus. … 
This International Eucharistic Congress marks the end of one journey, but more importantly, the beginning of another. For walking behind Jesus means always looking ahead, welcoming the kairos of grace, and being challenged every day by the Lord’s question to each of us, his disciples: Who do you say that I am? 
International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest 
Pope Francis Address, Sept 12, 2021         

Pre Praying

There is an old saying about the squeaky wheel getting the oil. This would indicate that anybody who complains loud enough will get attention. Little children in church seem to know this very well; they receive an abundance of attention from near-by parents and the total congregation.

There is a type of person we might label as a “complainer.” No one and nobody is unworthy of negative recognition or comment.

I am not complaining about these folks, but I have noticed that those who complain about persons and things around them are revealing a basic dissatisfaction more about their own insides.

Each of us knows our own personal “un-rightnesses” and we can pray with them with humility. As we live toward the next celebration of the Eucharist within our communities, we could pray for a little grace-oil right where we are likely to be grumping about ourselves.

Reflection

As often happens when hearing the verses in the First Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we need to read the full chapter from which the verses are taken. This is quite true to catch the full flavor of today’s First Reading. Shebna has had a rather lofty image of himself as well as a lofty place in the palace. He has begun to immortalize himself by beginning to construct his own tomb in a lofty place on the mountain. God has told him the he will be waded up like a ball and thrown out of the country with all his finery. He will die there in disgrace.

In this oracle God not only takes away Shebna’s symbols of domination, but calls somebody else from a different family to bless the people. Eliakim will be a “father” to the people of Jerusalem and all the people will be his family under God. Instead of warring with power and haughty presumption based on family of origin, Eliakim will be steadfast and use his authority for peace.

In the Gospel, Jesus travels with his disciples to a city whose name celebrates Roman power and its domination of Israel. Here he poses the big question for the purpose of eliciting a bigger answer. For the first time in their relationship Peter, speaking for the other disciples, declares publicly the name which is opposed to the power of Roman worldly forces, and all other ones. Jesus is the Christ and the son of God.

Peter, who comes from his earthly family, bar Jonah, or “son of Jonah,” is given a new name and as with Eliakim, he is given a title and a power. Peter, the name in Greek and Aramaic means “rock,” is to be the foundation of the group called together, or more commonly known as the Church.

As we heard last July 19th in the First Reading for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, from the Book of Wisdom, “your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all.” … “But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency.” The “keys” which Peter receives are the instruments of governing as Jesus received that power from his Father. Those keys in the hands of Jesus opened ears, eyes, and hearts. Those “keys” in the hands of Jesus shut out darkness, evil, and death from dominating God’s creation and God’s family.

Jesus had received his identity and needed no jingling of power-keys to satisfy this world’s demands. We are each invited to exercise his power to open ears, eyes, and hearts and to shut out the noises of false teachings, false posturing, and false temptations to identity.

Power can be used as a prop, a crutch to assist the insecure of spirit. True power is received, not grabbed and wielded like a club. We receive the Eucharistic, and the hands stretched out to accept this blessed gift are the same hands which have rewritten the new and present history of Christ’s church. This power does not corrupt, but in the hands of the faithful, it gives life to the world in his name.

The Width of Our Ecclesial Embrace

"And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it."

Nikos Kazantsakis once said "the bosom of God is not a ghetto, but our hearts often are." So too, sadly, are our ecclesiologies.

In church circles today, both liberal and conservative, our ecclesiologies are often anything but inclusive and Catholic ("Catholic" meaning wide and universal). We are pretty selective as to whom we consent to worship with and to whom we will accord the grace and wisdom of God. We tend to pick our fellow-worshippers along ideological lines rather than along the lines that Jesus suggests and we are getting ever more fastidious. More and more within our churches the sincere are divided from the sincere and the old tensions that used to exist between denominations now also exist within each denomination.

Given all of this, it can be helpful to reground ourselves in a critical truth that Jesus revealed.

One of his most stunning revelations is that God does not discriminate: "God lets his sun shine on the good as well as the bad." God, like the sun, shines on every kind of soil equally, fertile and barren alike. And if God showers love equally on the good and bad, then surely God showers love equally on liberals and conservatives, on the rigid and the fanciful, on those who are joyous and those who are bitter, on the politically-correct and on those less inclined to that kind of sensitivity, and on those who belong to our ecclesial set and on those who would prefer us dead. That's a disconcerting thought, but such, it would seem, is the scope of God's embrace.

Jesus says as much: "In my father's house there are many rooms," This is a statement about the width of God's embrace, not about the architecture of a heavenly mansion. God's heart, as revealed by Jesus, is a wide one, capable of embracing immense differences and carrying unbearable tensions.

That, I submit, is one of the major challenges to our churches today, to stretch our hearts, our theologies, our ecclesiologies, and our pastoral practices so as to be more in tune with the great truth of our founder's revelation that in God's house there are many rooms. Can we hold the differences among ourselves in patience, charity, and respect? Can we hold and carry more tension rather than always looking for resolutions that result in some being included and others excluded?

Raymond Brown, in his wonderful book on The Community of the Beloved Disciple, traces out how the early church, immediately after Jesus' departure, already struggled with many of the tensions we have today. The communities of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Paul emphasized very different things than did the communities that followed John.

However, in the end, the church chose to canonize both of them, chose to accept different Christologies and different Ecclesiologies, and to carry the tension and truth of both. It chose to put these differences into paradox rather than opposition.

Brown's words at the end of this fine book are ones that we, within every denomination and within every ideology within a denomination, might well take to heart:

He tells us the church's decision to place the Gospel of John in the same canon as the writings of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Paul was a decision to live with tension, to imitate God's wide embrace. As Brown puts it, by choosing to keep both, the church

has not chosen a Jesus who is either God or man but both; has chosen not a Jesus who is either virginally conceived as God's son or pre-existent as God's son but both; not either a Spirit who is given to an authoritative teaching magisterium or the Paraclete-teacher who is given to each Christian but both; not a Peter or a Beloved Disciple but both. ... This means that a church such as my own, the Roman Catholic, with its stress on authority and structure, has in the Johannine writings an in-built conscience against the abuses of authoritarianism. So also the `free' churches have in the Pastorals an in-built warning against abuses of the Spirit and in 1 John a warning against the divisions to which a lack of structured authority leads. Like one branch of the Johannine community, we Roman Catholics have to come to appreciate that Peter's pastoral role is truly intended by the risen Lord, but the presence in our Scriptures of a disciple whom Jesus loved more than he loved Peter is an eloquent commentary on the relative value of the church's office. The authoritative office is necessary because a task is to be done and unity is to be preserved, but the scale of power in various offices is not necessarily the scale of Jesus' esteem and love.

In a time of much ecclesial quarrelling, especially over authority, Raymond Brown reminds us that "the greatest dignity to be striven for is neither papal, episcopal, nor priestly; the greatest dignity is that of belonging to the community of the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ."

Our ecclesiologies should echo that.

Authority

“You are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it.” The Catholic Church has always looked up to today’s Gospel as the cornerstone of the Petrine ministry, the special role played by the successor of Peter. Catholics believe that the Bishop of Rome exercises a special authority over the church.

Authority within the context of the People of God is a special kind of authority. The reading from Isaiah is about removal from office for abuse of authority and replacement by someone who shall be a father.

The purpose of authority in the church, authority at any level, is not to control the lives of others but rather to help us to seek the values that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world.

Those with any authority in the church should reflect on their exercise of that authority, and those under authority should reflect on their attitude to the leaders of the church. All of us should join in praying that the Lord grant peace and unity to the Church

For the nurturing and constant growth of the People of God, the Lord instituted in His Church a variety of ministries, which work for the good of the whole body.

For those ministers who are endowed with sacred power are servants of their brethren, so that all who are of the People of God, and therefore enjoy a true Christian dignity, can work toward a common goal freely and in an orderly way, and arrive at salvation.

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church, 1964:18.

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:

• Who do people say
• Some say, who do you say
• You are the Christ
• I will build my church

To the point: In answer to Jesus' query about his identity, the disciples tell Jesus what others are saying about him. Jesus is not simply initiating an open discussion, however; he is leading the disciples to personal understanding and profession of who he is. Peter arrives there when he acclaims, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Each of us must come to this same personal profession about who Jesus is. The church is that community of individuals who have come personally to know who Jesus is and have chosen personally to make Jesus known to the world. Jesus himself will lead us there through our personal encounters with him.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: In the First Reading, God clearly chooses who is not to lead (Shebna is removed from office) and who is to lead (Eliakim is appointed). In the gospel Jesus chooses who will lead—first Peter but then all who profess that Jesus is the Christ.
… to experience: We usually think of “profession” in terms of one's work, and the word implies that someone is well trained, has achieved expertise, and is committed. In this Gospel “profession” means a public declaration of who Jesus is and implies commitment.
 

 
 

Rock of Ages

“What’s happened to the church? The last council seems to be the work of the devil.” The words still stay with me, although I heard them from an older priest many years ago.

He died not long after, and I often wonder what he would think if he were still alive. The apparently serene and steady church he once knew, that ark of sure safety, has been sailing troubled waters, to say the least.

Elders question whether our young know enough dogma or tradition to pass anything on to their future children. Nagging doubts stimulate questions: does the language of holiness and transcendence, of sin and forgiveness, of objective right and wrong, of the sacred and eternal even make sense to most Catholics?

Divisions are so stark and sharp. One invites complete perplexity by daring to read conservative and liberal Catholic publications in the same sitting. The demons of the one pose as angels for the other. Actions judged sinful by some Catholics are called virtuous by others. The papacy of Pope John Paul II inspired pride, hope, and trust for some, bitter disappointment—even anger—in others. Vocations to the priesthood and to the once-thriving religious congregations dwindle, despite the stronger showing among communities that are more conservative or “orthodox. 

If we even halfway agree with this account, what might we think of Christ’s words to Peter? “You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it.” This text, understood both in terms of papal primacy and the church’s durability, surely challenges the faith of the contemporary Catholic.

But when has it not been so? What kind of “rock” was Peter when only moments after his great profession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus would say, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me”? (Mt 16:23). That was only the beginning of Peter’s reign which has, of course, included braggadocio, denials, betrayals, reconciliations, victories, later struggles with Paul, and disappointments with his people.

As for Peter’s ark, that church, our church, how often it neared disaster: in the shadow of imperial armies, under threats of martyrdom and flame, in the depths of dark ages, infidelities of monks, scandals of popes, in the great wounds of schism, the slaughter of religious wars, the unraveling of the priesthood, the selling of bishoprics, the seductions of fascism, Communism, and capitalism.

Yet doom was not our destiny. Through all of history’s storms, despite infidelities, diminishments, and failure, the church has carried in its womb, to be born over and over again in scripture and the Eucharist, the Christ who asks of us, whether pope or peasant, “Who do you say I am?” From Borgia palaces to the huts of Connemara, in the convents of Lisieux and in the slave ships of Cartagena’s harsh harbors, on Korea’s crosses or Colorado’s mountain hermitages, the answer was given which made Peter a rock and the church an ark: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

St. Paul plumbed the mystery. “How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways.”

Commentary by John Chrysostom
Peter was to be entrusted with the keys of the Church, or rather, he was entrusted with the keys of heaven; to him would be committed the whole people of God. The Lord told him: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Now Peter was inclined to be severe, so if he had also been impeccable what forbearance would he have shown toward those he instructed? His falling into sin was thus a providential grace to teach him from experience to deal kindly with others.

Just think who it was whom God permitted to fall into sin—Peter himself, the head of the apostles, the firm foundation, the unbreakable rock, the most important member of the Church, the safe harbor, the strong tower; Peter, who had said to Christ, “Even if I have to die with you I will never deny you”; Peter, who by divine revelation had confessed the truth: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The Gospel relates that on the night Christ was betrayed Peter went indoors and was standing by the fire warming himself when a girl accosted him: “You too were with that man yesterday,” she said. But Peter answered: “I do not know the man.”

Just now you said: “Even if I have to die with you,” and now you deny him and say: “I do not know the man.” Oh Peter, is this what you promised? You were not tortured or scourged; at the words of a mere slip of a girl you took refuge in denial!

Again the girl said to him: “You too were with that man yesterday.” Again he answered: “I have no idea what man you mean.”

Who was it that spoke to you, causing you to make this denial? Not some important person but a woman, a doorkeeper, an outcast, a slave, someone of no account whatever. She spoke to you and you answered with a denial.

What a strange thing—a girl, a prostitute, accosted Peter himself and disturbed his faith! Peter, the pillar, the rampart, could not bear the threat of a girl! She had but to speak and the pillar swayed, the rampart itself was shaken!

A third time she repeated: “You too were with that man yesterday,” but a third time he denied it. Finally Jesus looked at him, reminding him of his previous assertion. Peter understood, repented of his sin, and began to weep. Mercifully, however, Jesus forgave him his sin, because he knew that Peter, being a man, was subject to human frailty.

Now, as I said before, the reason God’s plan permitted Peter to sin was because he was to be entrusted with the whole people of God, and sinlessness added to his severity might have made him unforgiving toward his brothers and sisters. He fell into sin so that remembering his own fault and the Lord's forgiveness, he also might forgive others out of love for them.

This was God's providential dispensation.

He to whom the Church was to be entrusted, he, the pillar of the churches, the harbor of faith, was allowed to sin; Peter, the teacher of the world, was permitted to sin, so that having been forgiven himself he would be merciful to others.

(On Saints Peter and Elijah: PG 50, 727-728)

 

 
John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) was bom at Antioch and studied under Diodore of Tarsus, the leader of the Antiochene school of theology. After a period of great austerity as a hermit, he returned to Antioch where he was ordained deacon in 381 and priest in 386. From 386 to 397 it was his duty to preach in the principal church of the city, and his best homilies, which earned him the title “Chrysostomos” or “the golden-mouthed,” were preached at this time. In 397 Chrysostom became patriarch of Constantinople, where his efforts to reform the court, clergy, and people led to his exile in 404 and fmally to his death from the hardships imposed on him. Chrysostom stressed the divinity of Christ against the Arians and his full humanity against the Apollinarians, but he had no speculative bent. He was above all a pastor of souls, and was one of the most attractive personalities of the early Church.

Reading I: Isaiah 22:19-23

In this passage Isaiah denounces one Shebna, the prime minister (“who is master of the household,” Is 15), and predicts his replacement by Eliakim. The passage is notable for its use of the “key” taken up in the Gospel today, the Tu es Petrus saying.

 
 
Responsorial Psalm: 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8

Slightly different selections of verses from this psalm are used on the fifth and seventeenth Sundays of the year in series C. Today’s refrain (“Lord, your love is eternal”) suggests that God’s purposes are not defeated by the infidelity of his human instruments. God can replace a faithless agent with another who is faithful to him.

 
Reading II: Romans 11:33-36

This magnificent doxology comes at the end of Paul’s discussion of Israel’s place in salvation history. Biblical theology is an attempt to reflect on the ways of God in salvation history. This is precisely what Paul has been doing in Rm 9-11.

But the biblical theologian must always confess the inadequacy of his or her work.

The riches and wisdom of knowledge of God are always too deep to penetrate, God’s judgments and ways are unsearchable. No theologian has ever known the mind of the Lord. No theology, however venerable, can claim to be absolute.

There comes a time when the theologian must lay down the pen and confess the relativity of all his or her formulations. Theology is therefore always subject to change. And theology is best done in the context of liturgy. It must be doxological.

 
Gospel: Matthew 16:13-20

Matthew has introduced considerable alterations into his Marcan source. The words “Son of the living God” are added to Peter’s confession. In Mark, Jesus almost ignores Peter’s confession and enjoins the disciple to silence. He then proceeds at once to speak of the necessity of his passion. Peter protests and is met by the rebuke “Get behind me, Satan.” (Mt 16:23)

Matthew has placed the prediction of the passion, Peter’s objection, and Jesus’ rebuke in a separate pericope following the confession. Instead, Jesus pronounces Peter blessed and gives him the name Peter, “Rock.”

Then comes a series of promises: the building of the church on the foundation of Peter; the assurance that the powers of death shall not prevail against that church; the promise of the keys; and the saying of the binding and loosing.

There seems to be a growing consensus that the original situation of these words to Peter was not in the earthly life of Jesus but in a post resurrection setting; that the whole passage, Mt 16:17-19, enshrines very early material going back to the Aramaic-speaking Church; and that the Rock on which the church is to be built is Peter himself, not his faith, as some patristic and most Reformation exegesis has supposed.

But there is division among exegetes along confessional lines over the question of the continuation of Peter’s function in the church.

Protestant exegesis sees the fulfillment of the saying about the Rock in the once-and-for-all role that played such a large part in the foundation of the church after the first Easter and resurrection appearances (Cullmann), and sees the power of the keys and of binding and loosing as continued in the church as a whole, though capable of being entrusted to particular officers by the community (Marxsen).

Anglican exegetes tend to agree with the Orthodox that the power of the keys and of binding and loosing is shared by the whole episcopate, though many of them would be prepared to allow the Bishop of Rome a special place in this collegial office. Catholic scholars naturally maintain that the Petrine office is vested in the papacy.

Nonetheless, it is significant that on all sides there is growing Christian awareness that one aspect of the Petrine office—witness to the resurrection—belongs to the events of the Christian beginnings and is therefore inalienable. At the same time, its other aspects—keys, binding and loosing—continue in the church. This continuity is a sign of the faithfulness of God.

Rock, Chief Rabbi, Majordomo

Someone, I think it was George Bernard Shaw, said, “The church was founded with a pun.” He was right. The intent of that remark may have been dismissive, but, as is usual with biblical puns, the wordplay of Jesus is far from trivial. In fact, the play on Simon's nickname is just one of several rich biblical allusions at work in this key passage.

Peter was not a personal name in first-century Palestine. Petros, the masculine form of the Greek word petra (“rock”—reflected in our English words “petrify” and “petroleum,” oil from rock rather than olives), translates the Aramaic kepha (“rock”). Kepha, or Peter, is a special name that Jesus gives Simon bar Jonah to signify his appointed mission.

Why Rock? We might call someone Rocky today to refer to his physical toughness. In Simon’s case the name more likely has biblical roots. First, there is the precedent of Isaiah 51:1-2, where the founding ancestors of the people of Israel, Abraham and Sarah, are called, respectively, “the rock from which you were hewn” and “the pit from which you were quarried.” Then there is the fact that the expected messiah was to be the builder of a new temple, just as in 2 Samuel 7 the son of David was to build a temple; and even though the first son of David, Solomon, built the first temple, the end-time Messiah was also expected to build the temple of the messianic age. When Jesus speaks of “building” his Church on the rock of Simon, he is of course speaking of a community, but the image is that of a physical structure, a temple. And temple does indeed become a favorite image of the early Church to describe itself (as in 1 Cor 3:10-16, 1 Pet 2:2-8, and Eph 2:19-22).

But if the Church can be pictured as temple, it is also a household. That image comes into play when Jesus speaks of giving Peter the keys to the kingdom. Isaiah 22, the First Reading this Sunday, provides the background. King Hezekiah's steward has abused his office and the prophet mediates the divine command that the king is to dismiss him and bestow the key of the house of David upon Eliakim. With the language of “keys to the kingdom,” Jesus appoints Peter as steward of the Church, now imaged as household—indeed, the spiritual household of the ultimate Son of David.

A further image comes into play when Jesus speaks of “binding and loosing” to describe Peter's authority. Binding and loosing refers to the authority of the chief rabbi of a community. Sometimes it referred to the application of the Torah to a particular case (the apparent reference here). Sometimes it referred to the power to include or exclude a member of the community (see Mt 18:18). Thus, Jesus makes Peter, in effect, chief rabbi of the community of the Church.

This passage has been a battleground of hostile debate between Protestants and Catholics. In some quarters it may still be that, but in today’s sober dialogue between Catholic and Lutheran scholars at least, a strong consensus has emerged that the Petrine ministry of overseeing the unity of the Church (historically realized by the Bishops of Rome) is an essential part of the New Testament’s presentation of the Church of Christ. And so it is part of any Christian's discipleship to pray and work for the full realization of that ministry of unity, the reunion of a divided Church.

Jesus’ Identity
Today’s familiar story takes on a very different orientation when placed respectfully in its Mediterranean cultural context.

Dyadic Personality

Americans are recognized as the most individualistic people who ever lived on the face of this planet. Each one strives to be distinct. In the United States, everyone has a personal social security number and many other distinctive and singular identities.

Mediterranean people are exactly the opposite. Experts describe them as dyadic personalities. The word dyad means “pair.” Such people are other oriented to such an extent that they have no sense of their individuality but depend rather on the opinions of others to help them know who they are.

Jesus’ question, therefore, is not a “theology quiz” for his disciples. It reflects a normal, Mediterranean curiosity by Jesus, a dyadic personality, about what other people think. Like everyone else in this culture, Jesus needs such feedback because he does not know who he is, and he is trying to learn this from significant others in his life.

Stereotyping

In Jesus’ case, the question is particularly interesting because the normal stereotyping of that culture was not working. Jesus’ enemies feel satisfied in knowing him as “Jesus of Nazareth.” To know a person’s home village is to know everything about that person. All people in Nazareth were presumed to be alike. Nathanael’s rhetorical question, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46) simply echoes the commonly held, stereotypical image of that village’s inhabitants: worthless or no good.

Another stereotypical identification of Jesus is “the stone worker’s or wood worker’s son” (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3). The ancient wisdom observed, “like father, like son.”

To know a family was to know everything about every member of that family. “‘Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at Jesus” (Mt 13:55-57).

True to Mediterranean form, Jesus’ disciples tell him what others are saying about him, and how others are perceiving him: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, another of the prophets. All of these are honorable if mistaken perceptions. But Jesus presses for Simon’s opinion, and he says, “the Messiah, the son of the living God.”

Jesus' Identity

Jesus now has a rather large assortment of opinions to ponder. In gratitude to Simon for this information, Jesus bestows on him a nickname, Rocky or Peter. New names were regularly given at significant moments in a group’s life, especially to the more prominent members.

In addition, Jesus promises that Peter will become like him, a broker who can provide access to God the patron. This is the significance of giving him the “keys of the kingdom.” Keys open doors, which is another way to describe a broker’s specialty.

Over and beyond that, Peter is given a distinctive power to declare authoritative judgments (“binding and loosing”), something which appears to have been given to all the disciples in Mt 18:18.

If American believers read Jesus’ question here from the intense psychological perspective that dominates modern American convictions about self-knowledge and knowledge of others, they will assume Jesus knows who he is and is testing his friends to see if they know.

If they use the Mediterranean scenario painted above, they will have to assume Jesus does not know and looks to significant others in order to find out. How will you read the passage?

What’s in a Name?

This week, Peter is in for a big surprise.

In last week’s Gospel Jesus retired the name “Simon” and replaced it with the name Peter.

And so I say to you, you are Peter
and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it
(Mt 16:18).

We heard that, at root, the name Peter meant “rock.” Simon is to be a “Rock,” the foundation of the church.

Surprise, surprise, the name Jesus gives Peter this week has a very different flavor: he calls him “Satan”. If this name were to stick, Peter would be the leader of the very “netherworld” which Jesus promised could not prevail against the church.

What has happened?

First, it is quite clear that Jesus’ emotional state has changed.

He is obviously dreading the suffering and death he will soon have to face. His rebuke to Peter is so sharp, so instant, so contradictory, that its emotional roots are showing. He knows what a terrible toll human misery and affliction will take on him. He snaps at Peter and even resorts to name-calling.

Second, Jesus had been gradually schooling the disciples about who he really is. Not just a great teacher, or good friend, or magnetic preacher, but the complete revelation of divine love. They had achieved their first high mark last week when Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Gospel, 21 Ord A 20)

Up until now he had not spoken a word to them about the crucifixion. At this stage, they should be able to begin to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Christ. Shouldn’t they? So this week he shows the real meaning of Christly love: for the good of the world he must suffer greatly under the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Do the Apostles get it? No. The Gospel reports that Peter “rebukes” Jesus. Something like this:

No, no, no, no, Lord, we will protect you—this will not happen to you, please don’t worry so much. Everything will be ok, you’ll see. We need you to be alive. You are the Christ! Use your powers!

It is an impulsive response. Very human. But notice that Peter is telling Jesus to avoid pain by selfish use of his divine powers.

This is just what the devil had recommended in the desert temptations (Matthew 4:1-11)! When Jesus was hungry, Satan had said, stealthily, you are Messiah! Why don’t you simply turn these stones into bread? After that, have your angels save you from all danger. And then, be a real Messiah, be in charge of all the lands there are. Why not?

Because all of this would require bowing down and worshipping Satan.

To put it another way, Jesus would have to act according to the self-seeking, self-interested part of human nature. Go for the wealth, the power and the reputation. Forget Godly love.

Since he was human, Jesus must have felt within himself the rewards that would come with such desert temptations. And he must feel it now as Peter gives him the same enticement.

So he reacts strongly.

Does he really mean that Peter is Satan? No. But surely he remembers with pain the devil’s temptations.

No wonder that name slips out.

Getting Ready to Pray

Being faithful to God is much more than keeping rules and doing the “holy” things. Being faithful to God has much to do with being faithful to the name God has given to us, the name “creature.” We are invited by today’s readings to our being faithful to our true identities and this involves living with the tensions which come from opposition.

We pray in preparation for celebrating Christ’s faithful journey toward his cross and the self-surrendering act of his death. We walk toward this celebration of the liturgy, or we remember it, as we walk toward our own final surrender to being limited creatures.

We can pray with our own awareness of how easy personal infidelities are. Life has many crosses, but the heaviest is that one of our being grateful and accepting of our God-given, God-blessed selves.

Some Thoughts 

In the First Reading, we hear the beginning of a prayer or conversation that Jeremiah has with God. He admits some good things about himself and how, at times, he would rather not be who he is. In the end of course, Jeremiah did faithfully play his part in God’s work of redemption.

In the Gospel, Jesus is presenting to his friends the real meaning of what it is going to mean to be the Christ and the Son of God. He will have to show up in Jerusalem.

There is a deep reality to Jesus’ being the Christ, and a deeper reality of the disciples’ being followers of the Christ. Jesus invites them to come with him by means of being faithful to their relationship with him. That is what has made them who they are.

His “cross” was more than the wood of Calvary. It was flesh and spirit, the history and destiny of his whole life. He, his very self, was his cross! He was who he had heard he was, the “Beloved of the Father.”

Today we might say, easily, that certain other people are our crosses. We might say that a certain physical disability or personality defect is our cross. But it is more interior than that. What Jesus is offering the disciples and us, is the personal embrace of the totality of our reality: creature, limited, a mind that thinks like a imperfect creature.

Recently I was jogging and twisted my ankle and fell to the pavement. It hurt and I lifted my face and asked silently, “what are you telling me?” A little voice said, “Get up.” So for the past three weeks I have been getting up with a slight hobble. My injured ankle is not my cross: my struggling with my whole humanity is the cross of my life.

We who are followers of Jesus, who proclaim like Peter that Jesus is the Son of God, we are not seduced nor fooled. We believe and struggle with the verticality of our souls and the horizontality of our human creatureliness. The cross is not an event of time, but the time-bound movement toward our own Jerusalem and resurrection.

“Get up!” the voice said to Jeremiah, to Jesus, to Peter, and to each of us who hobble after the Master. We wait for him to show up and raise us all.

Editing Your Own Life

The laws of mathematics and physics have forever been one of our great constants. They are predictable and reliable, not given to strange surprises. But now, more and more, scientists are finding that even the laws of physics sometimes offer unexpected surprises and exhibit a freedom that leaves us baffled. Freedom, it seems, is everywhere.

Novelists have always known this. A novelist creates an imaginary character, begins to write a story, and then discovers that this character doesn’t always want to follow what the author had in mind for her. She becomes her own person, develops her own attitude, goes her own way, and shapes the story in a way that the novelist never intended. In the end, partly independent of the author, each character writes his or her own story.

In a new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller takes this concept and uses it to offer a wonderful challenge within which each of us is invited to edit our own life so as to make our story a better and more noble one.

He does this through a series of autobiographical essays within which he challenges himself to write a better story with his own life and then invites his readers to each edit our own lives so as to build a story which is more interesting and more noble, one which, like a great movie, will leave its audience in tears and longing to do better things with their lives when the final credits roll.

Here’s how he describes it:

So I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted that something other than me was showing me a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer, who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.

His writing is brilliant but deceptive. Because of his particular genre, he can seem almost superficial at times, but, in the end, what you get is a combination of David Sedaris (wit, playful self-effacement), Annie Lamott (earthy, disarmingly direct), Kathleen Norris (outstanding common sense, intelligence), Henri Nouwen (an honest look at yourself) and Ignatius of Loyola (good rules for discernment and a bit of a guide to everything). Donald Miller runs all of this through a blender.

Initially, as I read the first chapters, I was taken only by his language and not by his content. He sounded more the comic wit than the wise elder. But slowly, almost imperceptibly—and this is his genius—depth, idealism, Christian vision, disarming common sense, and his real challenge begin to seep through, becoming clearer and more inviting as his story goes on.

Here’s an example of both his writing and his depth. In this a passage he shares how he discerns the real voice of God from the many false, neurotic voices that he, and most everyone else, commonly can confuse with God’s voice:

As a kid, the only sense I got from God was guilt, something I dismissed as a hypersensitive conscience I got from being raised in a church with a controlling pastor. But that isn’t the voice I’m talking about. … The real Voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and the profane. It’s not an agitated Voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts.

The Voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom that says: Hold your tongue; don’t talk about that person that way; forgive the friend you haven’t talked to; don’t look at that woman as a possession; I want to show you the sunset; look and see how short life is and how your troubles are not worth worrying about; buy that bottle of wine and call your friend and see if he can get together, because, remember, he was supposed to have that conversation with his daughter, and you should ask him about it.

And that Voice, he says, is forever saying to us: “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create it even as I have created you.”

In the end, this book is a healthy apologetic for faith, morality, decency, and God, the kind of challenge we badly need today. I was given the book by friend who has a twenty-something daughter who has long protested her doubts about God and, not least, her agnosticism about the church. This young post-Christian, my friend said, found the book on the kitchen table, picked it up out of curiosity, and then read it cover to cover, admitting that she was much challenged by it.

Now that’s not a bad endorsement!

My Ways Are Not Your Ways

Peter knew that Jesus was the messiah awaited by God’s people, but he did not understand that Jesus would be a suffering messiah. God forbid that any such thing ever happen to you!

But it did happen to Jesus, and it happens to those who follow him: “If a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self (and) take up his cross.”

Jeremiah had foretold the suffering of those who work for the coming of the kingdom: “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me ... The word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day.”

It is not easy, this business of following Christ.

You work for peace, and people accuse you of being unpatriotic. You stand up for the poor, and people write you off as a naive dreamer. You work for nonviolent change, like Martin Luther King, or Ita Ford, or Archbishop Oscar Romero, and they shoot you. Meanwhile, you calmly go about your life, praying that God fill our hearts with love and increase our faith.

“Do not conform yourselves to this age,” Paul wrote to the Romans. We pay a price for such an approach, but we do so willingly because of our faith in the “promise of salvation.”

The Church, like a pilgrim in a foreign land, presses forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God, announcing the cross and death of the Lord until he comes.

By the power of the risen Lord, she is given strength to overcome patiently and lovingly the afflictions and hardships which assail her from within and without, and to show forth in the world the mystery of the Lord in a faithful though shadowed way, until at the last it will be revealed in total splendor.

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church, 1964:8.

First Reading
Jeremiah 20:7-9

1. Jeremiah couldn’t ignore the call to prophecy even though it brought him much ridicule. Who today speaks out about injustice in human trafficking, police profiling, and the economy? What social or economic structures of injustice would you like to transform so much that you can’t keep quiet about it?

2. How does Pope Francis’ statement in his 2013 America Magazine interview relate to “it becomes like fire burning in my heart.” from today’s reading? Could racial, immigration, and environmental problems be some of the “wounds” to which he is referring?

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage. … We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound.

A Big Heart Open to God: An interview with Pope Francis
Sept. 30, 2013

Second Reading
Romans 12:1-2

1. How do you discern God’s will? Does certainty about the will of God come suddenly? Can it emerge gradually? Do you imagine you have made the decision and then check for feelings of consolation or desolation?
 
2. Do you think Christ will use your suffering for the salvation of the world if you unite your trials with his?

Gospel
Matthew 16:21-27

1. Which of these situations fit into Christ’s instruction, “Lose your life for my sake and find it”?

Doctors and nurses treating people with the Covid virus;
Dads and Moms making sacrifices for the good of the family;
Priests, brothers and sisters generously serving others;
Young people daring to follow their consciences, unafraid to go against the current;
People renouncing their own interests to work with immigrants, elderly, disabled, trafficked?
2. You cannot take your money and possessions with you when you die. If you “lose your life” out of love for others, does that give you something to take with you? Is it the love in your heart that goes with you when you die?

Not Conforming to the Age

You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.
(Mt 16:23)
Our desire for equilibrium fools us. Smooth sailing and steady stability, we suppose, should be the by-products of faith. That’s why we often secretly hope to experience a baptism in the Spirit to end all baptisms or a mighty conversion that solves everything once and for all. But like Jeremiah, we soon enough find out that the calling of God is not the beginning of tranquillity.

“You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.” Jeremiah would live to be mocked, laughed at, derided. Eventually, he told God he’d had enough. To no avail. “It is like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” The gift of prophecy required a life of resistance.

So it is with discipleship according to Paul. “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God’s will.”

Even Peter had a hard time accepting the cost of discipleship. Within moments of his confirmation as leader, he is protesting the struggle, the pain, the failure, and the rejection that Jesus foretells. “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” But Jesus rebukes Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Following Christ costs the follower. What must be paid is a willingness to let go of our hunger for security, approval, and comfort; to take up our own cross of love and give ourselves away, to abandon our images of success and schemes of self-indulgence.

The lure of holiness, as Jeremiah found out to his discomfort, provides no warm blanket. Love’s love is no crutch, as some critics of religion have imagined. No, it is a harrowing experience, something like a death. Only radical insecurity remains when we entrust all to God, especially our disappointments and failure.

We live in an age when, by all cultural accounts, our faith is foolish. Our ritual is weirdly transcendent. Our vows appear to be unkeepable promises, our sacraments quaint. The practices we aspire to are held in high suspicion.

It is impossible, we are told, for people to be chaste. It is idiotic not to choose what pleases or fulfills us. This cultural skepticism is so deep in our own bones that we, like Peter, balk before the truth Christ proposes.

How often do our church, our preaching, our practice, merely ape the culture’s love of money, power, and privilege? The way of faith reaches too high; its paths are too arduous.

Yet in daunting times, let us recall Peter, who himself endured the same. Peter does “get behind” Jesus but does not give up because of his failure. He follows to Jerusalem, even though he fears. He follows to Gethsemane, even though he sleeps there. He follows to the Passion, even though he hides. He waits for Christ in the upper room, even though he is shamed by his betrayals.

May the church that Peter once led, despite all its harrowing trials, have faith to do the same.

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases:  began to show his disciples, rebuke him, deny himself, loses his life, find it

To the point: No wonder Peter rebukes Jesus! Jesus “began to show his disciples” what faithful discipleship demands: denying self, losing self, letting self die. Jesus teaches his disciples to let go of self so that a new self can be given. What we relinquish is ourselves as we are now; what we are given is a new self born from identifying completely with Jesus. It takes a lifetime of discipleship to turn from wanting to rebuke Jesus' way of living through the cross to embracing it. It takes a lifetime of discipleship to let Jesus transform our life into his Life.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: Jeremiah grows tired of the demands of authentic prophecy; he vows to quit speaking. But God's word burns within him, drawing him back to speaking in God's name. Jesus' faithful disciples cannot avoid the demands of the cross; Jesus draws them to embrace the cross for the sake of receiving his Life.
… to experience: The drive to preserve our life is one of our strongest instincts. In this gospel Jesus is asking us to let go of our life so he can give us something more: a share in his divine Life.

Commentary by Augustine
  “If anyone wished to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and come after me.”

Our Lord’s command seems hard and heavy, that anyone who wants to follow him must renounce himself. But no command is hard and heavy when it comes from one who helps to carry it out. That other saying of his is true: “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt 11:30). Whatever is hard in his commands is made easy by love.

We know what great things love can accomplish, even though it is often base and sensual. We know what hardships people have endured, what intolerable indignities they have borne to attain the object of their love.

What we love indicates the sort of people we are, and therefore making a decision about this should be our one concern in choosing a way of life.

Why be surprised if people who set their hearts on Christ and want to follow him renounce themselves out of love? If we lose ourselves through self-love we must surely find ourselves through self-renunciation.

Who would not wish to follow Christ to supreme happiness, perfect peace, and lasting security? We shall do well to follow him there, but we need to know the way.

The Lord Jesus had not yet risen from the dead when he gave this invitation. His passion was still before him; he had still to endure the cross, to face outrages, reproaches, scourging; to be pierced by thorns, wounded, insulted, taunted, and put to death.

The road seems rough, you draw back, you do not want to follow Christ. Follow him just the same. The road we made for ourselves is rough, but Christ has leveled it by passing over it himself.

Who does not desire to be exalted?

Everyone enjoys a high position. But self-abasement is the step that leads to it. Why take strides that are too big for you—do you want to fall instead of going up? Begin with this step and you will find yourself climbing.

The two disciples who said: “Lord, command that one of us shall sit at your right hand in your kingdom and the other at your left” had no wish to think about this step of self-abasement. They wanted to reach the top without noticing the step that led there.

The Lord showed them the step, however, by his reply: “Can you drink the cup that I am to drink?” You who aim at the highest exaltation, can you drink the cup of humiliation?

He did not simply give the general command: “Let him renounce himself and follow me” but added: “Let him take up his cross and follow me.”

What does it mean to take up one’s cross?

It means bearing whatever is unpleasant—that is following me. Once you begin to follow me by conforming your life to my commandments, you will find many to contradict you, forbid you, or dissuade you, and some of these will be people calling themselves followers of Christ.

Therefore if you meet with threats, flattery, or opposition, let this be your cross; pick it up and carry it—do not collapse under it. These words of our Lord are like an exhortation to endure martyrdom.

If you are persecuted you ought, surely, to make light of any suffering for the sake of Christ.

Sermon 96, 1-4: PL 38, 584-586

 
Augustine (354-430) was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education, although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396. Augustine’s theology was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense. He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth century. Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual writer.

Reading I: Jeremiah 20:7-9

Of all the Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah comes closest to the New Testament understanding of what it means to be a bearer of God’s word.

He foreshadows the truth, first emphasized in the New Testament by Paul, in opposition to the wandering preachers, who set great store in their own miraculous powers and visionary experiences, that witness means suffering.

This theme was then taken up by Mark (followed, as we see in today’s ospel, by Matthew) in his redaction of the Jesus tradition. 

It is this aspect of today’s passage from Jeremiah that the caption rightly emphasizes: “The word of the Lord has meant derision for me.”

 
 
Responsorial Psalm: 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

Many of the psalms are intensely personal, but when they were adopted into the liturgy of the temple, they acquired a corporate meaning, the “I” of the psalmist being expanded to embrace the whole people of God.

In the person of Jesus Christ, who is the true Israel, the psalm is narrowed down again to a single person, the “I” of Christ himself. But then it expands once more to include the body of Christ, which in him can take these words to itself.

The people of God on their pilgrimage pass through a dry and weary land where there is no water.

But in the sanctuary, as they assemble to celebrate the liturgy, they have a pledge and assurance of the ultimate vindication of Christ’s cause.

They feast together on “marrow and fat” and praise God with joyful lips, even in the midst of the dry and weary land.

 
Reading II: Romans 12:1-2

It is a pity that the text as printed omits a tiny yet crucial word—“therefore” (Greek: oun): “I appeal to you therefore, brethren.” It is crucial because Rm 12-15 of Romans present Christian ethics as “therefore ethics,” that is to say, Christian ethics is a response to what God has done in Christ.

Only after expounding the redemptive act of God in Christ and setting it in the context of salvation history could Paul go on to discuss ethical problems. This ethic is seen as the true Christian worship.

In a celebrated essay, Ernst Käsemann suggested that Paul is in some way anticultic, that for him true Christian worship is to be seen in ethical behavior, not in the cultus. This is the kind of either-or that appeals to the German mind, but it does less than justice to the inclusiveness of the biblical material.

No one doubts that liturgy must penetrate life, but life must first find its focus in liturgy. We present our bodies as a living sacrifice in the liturgy (Cranmer included this phrase in the eucharistic prayer, and it has remained a feature of Anglican liturgies ever since) precisely in order that we may go out into the world and present them in life.

Christian ethics is not primarily expressed in a code. Paul will give something that looks like a code in Romans 12 through 15, with many single commandments.

But these are meant as illustrations of what a renewed mind, not conformed to this world, will lead to.

In an apt illustration, John A. T. Robinson has spoken of the Christian’s “antennae,” which should enable one to discern the will of God in a given situation and which arises out of a transformed mind.

Such transformation takes place through hearing the Word of God and through offering oneself to God in union with Christ’s suffering. This takes place quite concretely in the liturgy.

 
Gospel: Matthew 16:21-27

As we noted in the comments for last Sunday, Matthew has detached this section from Mark’s pericope and placed it by itself.

As in the second reading today, a tiny but significant word has been left out at the beginning—the word “then” (Greek: tote): “Then Jesus began to show his disciples.” This word detaches this section and yet links it as a sequel to the foregoing pericope.

The other major alteration Matthew has made in the Marcan text is in the final verse (Mt 16:27), which he has converted into a scene of the parousia—Last Judgment: “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done.”

For Mark, the court of the Son of Man will vindicate the church and pass judgment upon the believing world. For Matthew, it is the church that will be judged—a theme that he hammers home again and again, right up to the parable of the sheep and the goats.

The church will be judged according to the fidelity of its discipleship, even at the cost of taking up its cross and following Jesus, in its readiness to lose its life for his sake.

True Honor
The verse that immediately follows today’s reading helps us better understand what preceded: “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Mt 16:28).

Present Orientation

Mediterranean people of antiquity were primarily oriented toward the present. It is difficult and sometimes impossible for them to think “future.” The best they could imagine would be called “forthcoming.” The birth of a baby is a forthcoming event for an already pregnant mother. A harvest is a forthcoming event from a crop already planted and growing.

This perspective is starkly evident in Jesus’ stated conviction that those who heard him speak would still be alive when God would bestow his gifts upon that very generation through the mediation of the Son of Man.

Jesus died, was raised, and ascended to the right hand of the Father. And still the Son of Man has not come into his kingdom. It is the long delay (now centuries old) that sparked a vague idea of a real “future” among some Mediterranean Christians.

Peter Challenges Jesus

In his own lifetime, Jesus was able to read the handwriting on the wall. He had made an ever-growing number of powerful enemies. Their desire to have him put to death was no secret.

After learning from his disciples that others held him in high repute, ranking him along with Elijah, John the Baptist, and other worthies, Jesus could not turn away from the ominous destiny he began to perceive on his own horizon.

But when he stated the obvious to his disciples, Peter took him aside and said he had other plans for Jesus. Peter and Jesus now engage in a common Middle Eastern strategy revolving around honor: challenge and riposte. One person makes a claim to honor, another person challenges that claim. The first person must defend or vindicate his claim or he will be dishonored, shamed.

Jesus’ claim to honor is that God wills his suffering and death at the hands of his enemies (he must die), but that God will bestow even greater honor by raising him from the dead.

Peter’s challenge is: “God forbid it” (Mt 16:22). Jesus has just enunciated God’s honorable will, and Peter seeks to divert Jesus from fulfilling it. He wants God to change it. Jesus perceives that Peter is testing his loyalty to God, his very claim to honor.

Jesus’ riposte (a fencing term describing a sharp, swift thrust after parrying an opponent’s lunge) is to call Peter a “satan,” a tester of loyalties. Jesus continues the insult by reminding Peter that he sees only the human way of thinking and doesn’t understand God’s plan.

Jesus’ exhortations shatter the normal cultural vision of an honorable life and invite his listeners to consider reorienting their lives by means of disorientation. A fitting message for anyone searching for new direction in life.

Stumbling-Stone, Burning Heart, Living Sacrifice

This Sunday's Gospel continues the dialogue between Jesus and Simon, the Rock on which Jesus will build his Church. What happens is, quite literally, scandalous. Jesus follows his granting of primacy to the freshly named Peter with the first prediction of his passion (and resurrection). In response Peter rebukes Jesus and says, “God forbid. Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” Whereupon Jesus turns to Peter with strong words: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” The word behind “obstacle” is skandalon, literally “stumbling block.” The foundation stone has become a stumbling stone. “Satan” (adversary) is already such a shocking term that we scarcely notice skandalon.

Matthew (and Mark, though not Luke or John) dares to present Peter opposing Jesus in this matter of a suffering Messiah, apparently because he knows that Peter eventually learns and accepts the whole truth, and even loses his own life (in Rome) witnessing to Jesus as crucified and risen. This foundation-stone-become-stumbling-stone stands as a cautionary tale for all of us who are called to serve with authority in the Church, a reality that surely extends to parents with respect to their children and teachers with respect to students. The good news is that, by the grace of God, rehabilitation is not only possible but likely, if we pray.

We know, from the Acts of the Apostles and from tradition, that Simon was indeed enabled by the grace of God to become the rock the Church needed. Like Jeremiah in today's First Reading, and like another initially recalcitrant instrument (Paul), Peter was soon impelled to generous service by a fire in the belly.

Paul himself, in the Second Reading (from Romans), supplies a stunning image for Christian service that deserves our attention. “Offer your bodies,” he writes, “as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” As Jesus drew from Temple tradition to speak of building on a rock, Paul too draws from the realm of the Temple. Israel's practice had been to offer up the bodies of dead animals in Temple worship. Now Paul—in the spirit of Isaiah, Micah, and Psalm 51—says that the best offering to God is not a dead animal body but your own living one, not in suicidal immolation but in the very living out of your life. The rest of Romans (Rm 12:3ff) spells that out as building up the body of the Church by using one's gifts in mutual service, hospitality, prayer, and love of enemies.