JUNE 19^TH 2016. TWELFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL:  Luke 9:18-24

From a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

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GOSPEL:  LUKE 9:18-24

Once when Jesus was praying by himself,
and the disciples were with him,
he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”
They said in reply, “John the Baptist;
others, Elijah; still others, ‘One of the ancient prophets has arisen.’”
Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter said in reply, “The Christ of God.”
He scolded them and directed them not to tell this to anyone.
He said, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . This week’s Gospel challenges us to ask: “Who is Jesus? What kind of Saviour is he?” Is he a Saviour who comes to tell us that we are doing fine as we are and do not need to change? But how can a Saviour lead us into new life if we remain living the old life just as before? In the Gospel, immediately after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, we are told that we must take up our crosses on a daily basis and follow him. There is a fundamental association here. Jesus is indeed the Christ, he is indeed our Saviour, but following Christ is no victory parade. Following him is a journey out of egoism and self-absorption. It requires self-denial and embracing our crosses daily. When we go to a dietician, do we really think that we will be encouraged to eat all the same junk as before? When Jesus comes to bring us new life, do we really think we can continue living the same compromised existence as before? Jesus is not a patch that we put on, leaving the fabric of our lives more or less as it was before. Following Jesus means putting on a new garment altogether! Christianity is not a decaffeinated thing, a sanitized system of ideas that evokes warm feelings and nothing more. Jesus did not come to leave us living as we were before but to lead us into the new life of the Spirit!

This week’s Gospel challenges us to ask the questions: “Who exactly is Jesus? What kind of Saviour is he?”

This Sunday’s Gospel presents us with Luke’s account of the profession of faith of Peter. The question that is becoming critical at this point of the Gospel is: “Just who is this Jesus anyway?” Even John the Baptist has begun to ask, “Are you really the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” In last week’s Gospel, the question of the identity of Jesus also arose in the confrontation between the Pharisee and the sinful woman. For the Pharisee, Jesus could not even be a prophet, given that he was associating with the wrong sort of person. But for the woman, Jesus represents an encounter with the forgiveness of God, and for this she expresses her gratitude. Jesus, then, puts the question to his apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ”. Why does Jesus severely warn his disciples not to repeat this to anyone? Because it is only a piece of information that can be misused or twisted by someone for their own motives. Peter, in fact, doesn’t understand the full significance of his confession, but Luke does not emphasize this fact so much. What is emphasized is that this revelation should not be bandied about carelessly. Each person is likely to interpret the coming of the Christ and the beginning of a new phase of history according to his own projections and expectations.

Accepting Jesus as our Saviour, as the Christ, involves following him. And following him means to stop following ourselves. Self-denial is an essential aspect of embracing Christ

In order to understand the Messiah, it is necessary to renounce oneself. Immediately after the revelation that he is the Christ, Jesus states that he will not be a saviour that enjoys worldly success; he must suffer and embrace a glory that is not of this earth – the glory of the resurrection. In order to be able to follow him, in order to participate in this new phase of history, in order to embrace our mission, we must deny ourselves. For Luke, the cross is inextricably bound to our mission. The cross is the mission of Christ, the mission to which he points to with all of its suffering. We are challenged to accept our own mission, with all of the losses and discomforts that our mission brings, every day, and follow him. Embracing the cross is not an exceptional or extraordinary action: it is a daily thing and involves passing over from one’s own life to the new life of Christ.

Adopting Christ’s ways means laying aside our own ways. That is why we mourn when we gaze upon our pierced Saviour! He shows us the way that we too must go if we are to follow the path of life.

Why is all of this so important? In the first reading we read of a moment of illumination, of a change of perspective. The phrase from the prophet Zechariah: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced”, will later become a central citation from the Gospel of John, a Gospel that was written after the other three, but which contains certain elements that may be the most original and primitive from the life of Jesus.  The prophet Zechariah tells us that we will look in sorrow on the one whom we have pierced, and mourn for him as a mother mourns her firstborn son. The grief of a mother for her firstborn and only son is an infinite grief! It is a curious thing, but the path of life that opens up after a true encounter with Christ involves immense sorrow, the laying aside of one’s own ways. The spirit of consolation that Zechariah refers to, the salvation that is being brought to us by the Lord Jesus, requires distancing ourselves from our habitual approach to life, a renunciation of all that we possess and hold dear.

Jesus did not come to leave us as we are. He came to lead us out of ourselves, and this is painful! Jesus did not come to affirm our weaknesses, to say that all is well with our compromised mode of existence. He came so that we might pass from our ambiguous way of life to the new life of the Spirit.

The Messiah is not someone that can be adapted to our mode of being. It is not that we continue living as we have always lived, and then attach Jesus on top of our existence like a cherry on a cake. What is required is that we pass from the life that we are living now to the life that God wants to give us – the new life of baptism; thus we pass from natural life to supernatural life. The leap that we are challenged to make involves a bereavement, a renouncement, a losing of one’s own life. We cannot turn Christianity into a decaffeinated thing, a thing that has no impact, a thing that warms our hearts but doesn’t challenge us. Such a Christianity is useless because it leaves us as we were before. It would be like going to a dietician and hoping that he will still allow us to eat whatever we like. He won’t allow you to eat what you like so you might as well resign yourself to the necessity of change! It is impossible to change without undergoing a death of sorts. We cannot enter into new life without losing the old one! The Messiah did not come to patch up our old way of life and leave us more or less as we were. He came to bring us away with him, to lead us out of ourselves and follow him!