Weekly Reflection

Today’s Gospel passage is a damning one for poor Peter. Jesus calls him “Satan.” Jesus has got to the point in their relationship when he wants to share with the disciples what is going to happen. He says that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die. He also makes it clear that He will rise again on the third day. Peter says to Jesus, “Heaven preserve You, Lord…This must not happen to You.” Last Sunday we head Jesus speaking to Peter in different way: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” The place where Jesus says this in Matthew’s Gospel is only 5 verses before today’s “Get behind Me, Satan!” We have Peter’s strength put before us in the “You are Peter” verse; and suddenly we have his weakness in the “Get behind Me, Satan!” statement so soon after. Peter has many wonderful qualities, and we rejoice in them. However, the scriptures make sure that we are aware of Peter’s failings, too: for example, when Peter is walking on the water, he panics and cries out for help; and ultimately Peter tells Jesus he will die for Him but then denies Jesus and runs away. Peter is a real person of flesh and blood, full of all the bravery and fears involved in discipleship, yet he is an example that we do well to follow.

Are we not basically the same as Peter in his humanness and unworthiness? Could Jesus say the same to us, “Get behind me, Satan?” Probably many if not all of us, can think of moments in our lives when Jesus could say that to us. One of the reasons that we come to church is to help us to be better followers of Jesus. Today let us focus on what Jesus is telling us in this Sunday’s Gospel. He is saying to each one of us, “If you want to be My follower you have to pick up your cross and follow Me every day.” We know what Jesus call us to do – do we have the determination to do it? And when we fail, do we have the faith to turn to Jesus again?

Today’s readings all deal with the question of humanity’s search for and encounter with divinity. As today’s scripture show us, it is not that humanity is able to seek and find God by its own powers, but rather it is God who allows God’s self to be discovered by us. And usually we encounter God in the most unexpected of places and ways. Elijah encounters the living God in “the silence.”

In the Gospel the disciples are battling with the storm on the lake, in the circumstances that make any encounter with God highly improbable. Jesus invites Peter to recognize who He is, to have faith in Him, to take the step of faith. But it is only a step. Faced with the reality of the storm and danger of death, Peter’s faith wavers and he needs the Lord to save him.

In our lives, we can find ourselves like Elijah and Peter – at the end of our tether, living in fear, full of doubts. God comes to us unexpectedly – in the silence, in the midst of our busyness and our fear, in our tiredness and brokenness, in our doubts and desperation. The Lord invites us to come out of the darkness of the caves of our lives, to step out of the security of our little boats and to place our trust in Him.

Jesus is preparing His disciples for the even greater self-giving He will carry out on the cross, and the memorial, sacrificial meal, which we call the Eucharist. He feeds us not with earthly food, but with His very self, body and blood, soul and divinity. But the story does not end there, of course. By sharing in the Eucharistic banquet we are already participating not only in Christ’s death, but also in Christ’s resurrection, and therefore our own as well. All the sacraments are participations in the death and resurrection of Christ, but especially baptism and the Eucharist. This great Eucharistic generosity of God not only prepares us for eternal life, but has consequences for us now. If God is so generous with us, ought we not to be generous with others? One of the great challenges always facing us is that earth’s resources should be shared justly among all, especially those most in need. So, food, death and religion are profoundly linked, but utterly transformed in the light of the Gospel and the risen Jesus. Jesus still feeds us in the wilderness which this world can be, but we can always bear in mind that our home is the promised land of eternal life with the Blessed Trinity and all the saints and angels.

Solomon was a young man when he inherited the throne from his father, King David. He had no experience and much to learn, as is the nature of youth. But he had enough wisdom to ask for wisdom. He asked for the wisdom to rule well, and the ability to discern right from wrong.

In the Church today we need wise and eloquent preachers of the Gospel of Jesus. Indeed many preachers of the Gospel do not use words at all, but the example and the power of good lives faithfully lived in service of others.

We can think of parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, friends; so many people in this world who demonstrate by their daily life that they have found the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field. The love of God alive in their hearts blesses our lives each day. These people are true images of Christ Jesus, and the wisdom of the Lord shines through them. Now it is our time to be wise. The prayer of Solomon can be our prayer.

“The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man.” So Jesus is the main player in our parable today. “Kingdom” in this sense doesn’t mean something political; it means a state of affairs where men and women will accept God as their Father, love Him with all their hearts, and love their neighbors too, as God’s children.

Jesus never gave up preaching the kingdom. He was immensly patient, even when the twelve apostles misunderstood Him, when the crowd deserted Him after His teaching on the Eucharist, when His fellow townspeople tried to kill Him. That immense patience of Jesus is there in today’s Gospel. What matters is that the Gospel should be preached right up to the moment of the harvest, in other words the Last Judgment.

We are called to share the Gospel with our neighbors. Through the Holy Spirit, He is alive among us now. Through the Eucharist, through the sacraments, He empowers us to believe and to hope, and to look forward to heaven as our true home. Like Jesus we are to be patient. We are to be persistent in sharing the Gospel; to be patient even when the results seem thin, when our world seems to have grown out of God. Yet God is infinitely patient with us. “You are mild in judgment,” says the first reading, “you govern us with lenience.” Even at this moment, God is patient with us, and with our world.

Time and again Jesus constructs His parables around the daily lives of His listeners. The seed and the sower is a favorite image of His because it allows Him to bring out the miraculous growth and transformation that the good news can achieve in and through us. It also builds His message on the very real way in which nature works, a pattern that will become the foundation for our understanding of sacramental life. We can be too busy with other things; we can be too shallow and not able to deal with the challenges life throws at us. We can become too distracted by what the world offers us, its riches as well as its doubts and difficulties. What is asked of us is to give an open heart but then also to have the depth to understand what God is saying to us.

Jesus does seem to imply that the mixture of the soil and its circumstances matters. We have to be able to receive His word, and to do what we need to rid ourselves of the hindrances that prevent this happening. Many of us will have been formed by the way we were brought up. Such phrases as “the family that prays together stays together” try to evoke a world in which faith can be nurtured and passed on. However, many of us also have experience of this not always happening, and parents often blame themselves and wonder what they should or could have done differently. Similarly the growth of faith involves many different stages, and we may find ourselves sidetracked, making wrong assumptions or even losing of its pursuit. Jesus tells His disciples that the ordinary soil of humanity is not sufficient. That is why He speaks in parables, hoping to break through the reluctance of His audience to hear and understand. What we hope we will always retain is that underlying desire to understand more deeply the seed that lies within us and the openness to God’s touch that will lead us to produce the fruit of goodness and truth that God asks of us.

Today’s Gospel is one of the best-known, most quoted and hope-filled passages of scripture. When Jesus told His listeners that they could come to Him, it was a time when He himself had little time to spare, encountering not only those who loved Him, but also those who could not cope with His message and sought ways of silencing Him. Jesus was busy, but not too busy to welcome those who were sick and troubled, those regarded as important or considered unimportant, young people and old people. To Him, everybody is of value and worth accompanying. Jesus told the crowd that if they were to shoulder His yoke, they would find it “easy:” it would fit their shoulders. He did not mean His followers would have a trouble-free life. Jesus himself experienced opposition that would lead to the cross. He promised, however, that, with His support, nobody need find his or her burden too big to carry. That is why today’s Gospel has given comfort to so many people. We know we are not alone – and makes the difference. With Jesus alongside, we are never alone.

Parenthood is not easy, but it carries its unique joys. There is a sense of fulfilment and happiness when a child comes looking for consolation and reassurance. Even whe life seems to be filled with one problem after another, most parents do not wish away their children: they are there for their sons and daughters through thick and thin, giving countless small signs of love. “Great” parents are not those who achieve landmarks in society, but are those who, in simplicity and humility, take one step at a time, accompanying a child from her or his earliest days and through all of the bumps and scrapes along the way. Jesus did not boast of being God or of His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He was not stuffed with false pride, looking for a red carpet wherever He went. A parent does not need to boast of his or her talents and achievements to a child: children already know their own limited capabilities even while acting as though they ruled the world. Jesus was the perfect parent in His attitude towards others, but is there not also something beautiful that we can learn from our mums and dads? What can I learn, from my parents or those of others, about the reality of God’s love?

St. Peter and St. Paul were very different types of people. They didn’t always agree. Yet they shared a common purpose and it is the Spirit of the living Christ that guided them to the final summit of witness, their martyrdom in Rome. They indured imprisonment, torture and death for the sake of Christ they believed in. Finding the middle ground between these two virtues, humility and courage, is not easy, but the virtue of hope makes a unity of the two, just as the power of the Holy Spirit would bind these two remarkable servants together for all eternity. Between the leaf blowing in the wind, and the oak which does not bend but is blown over, we are called to be like supple trees, swaying in the wind of the Holy Spirit but always rooted in truth.