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XXII Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Jeremiah 20, 7-9; Psalm 63, R. My soul thirsts for you, O Lord my God; Romans 12: 1-2; Gospel – Matthew 16: 21-27
“Get away from me Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You don’t think like God, but like human beings think.” This “counter-rebuke” of Peter by Jesus is an emphatic reminder to us that the core of living out God’s mission for us is the how, beyond the what and why.
If we remember Jesus’ temptations at the end of his 40 days of prayer and fasting, he commands Satan to turn away from him after the third and final temptation.
Here he commands Satan to get behind him. He was both reprimanding and giving Peter another chance. The ways of Peter are of this world and of humanity, but the required way is the way of God. At the same time, asking Peter to “get behind me” renewed his opportunity to follow Jesus.
“Get behind me” and learn to follow me again, Jesus says to Peter. Here he traces the path of discipleship for Peter and for us.
“Whoever wants to come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”
Almost like a preamble, the first step in the process is to wish to be a disciple: “whoever wants to come after me.” We often seem to take this for granted.
I remember my first weeks in the Jesuit Novitiate in 1983. Each of us, first-year novices, were supposed to share the story of our vocation as part of our period of getting to know you.
Hearing my coprimi gave me some “insecurities”, which I jokingly shared with my spiritual director, Fr. Benny Calpotura, SJ. It seemed that all of them were called to be priests from their mother’s womb.
For this reason, one of the jewels of Ignacio de Loyola’s wisdom continues to guide me. He wrote that if you want to join the Society of Jesus, you should ask if you have any holy wishes. If not, do you have the desire to wish for these wishes?
It starts with desire
Do you want to be a disciple? Do you want to be one? This is our first point of examination, which we often assume, we overlook. But it all starts with desire, which is sometimes discovered outside the womb.
Starting with desire (desire), the process of “denial” becomes possible. If we agree with the adage that you cannot give what you do not have, we can conclude that what precedes the denial of the self is self-control.
Only the person who owns himself can make an offering of himself and is capable of self-denial. To do this, I turn once again to the wisdom of Ignacio.
Being a self-possessed person is having a “realistic knowledge of oneself”, as the “Characteristics of Jesuit education” call it. It comes from the process of self-awareness and self-acceptance that is inserted in the framework of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius.
The process leads to the achievement of freedom. First, a freedom from that allows one to go to a deeper level of freedom.
A very concrete and contemporary experience of “freedom from” is what many have experienced during these almost six months of pandemic and the consequent closure, when and where we discover the essentials of our lives.
As Enchong Dee put it in my conversation with him in “Travels of Hope”, “I realized that we have a lot, but we only need very little.” This is the freedom from the non-essential that leads us to the freedom to choose the essential.
The freedom to choose is the freedom to “take up your cross.”
A Scripture commentary notes that Jesus was very specific in telling prospective followers to “take up your cross,” our cross, and not his, the cross of Jesus.
Personal travel
But he was quick to add: “and follow me.” Here we have the synthesis of the personal path that begins with desire, a desire in search of a meaning greater than oneself. Having discovered this possibility of meaning, one travels to the realm of the essential.
It is a personal evaluation that leads to the choice of what truly are the essential elements of our life. And in this passage of the Gospel, he takes us to the core, the most essential thing: following Jesus.
Jesus describes the fruits of this following as “whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good would it do to someone to win the whole world and lose their life?
Or what can you give in exchange for your life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will pay everything according to his conduct.
This is a promise that may seem eschatological in nature, but it is actually a promise of the quality of life that we can live in the here and now.
It is a life lived with the quality of eternity, eternity as the horizon, where we know that the last word is not suffering and death, but joy and fullness of life; a life on the cross, yes, but also a life, the fullness of life in the Resurrection.
This is the how of our life here and now: living it as a follower of Jesus, and as such it is a life that overcomes the evils and temptations of this world with the good, the good that can only come from following Jesus on the way of the Cross and the Resurrection.
—CONTRIBUTED
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