Homily for September 25th, 2015: Mark 8:27-33.
Today’s gospel
reading recounts Peter’s confession of faith: “You are the Messiah of God.”
Confirming this statement, Jesus says that he will be rejected and killed. In
Mark’s account of this incident, and in Matthew as well, Peter immediately
protests, causing Jesus to tell him that he is thinking is on the human level,
not on God’s. Pope Francis referred to this incident when he celebrated his
first Mass with the cardinals who had just elected him in March 2013. Here is
what the Pope told them:
“The same Peter who had confessed Jesus Christ said to
him: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I will follow you, but
let’s not talk about the cross. This is not a part of it. I will follow you in
other directions, but not to the cross. When we journey without the cross, when
we build without the cross and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we
are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly, we are bishops, priests,
cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord. I would like for us all, after
these days of grace, to have courage, precisely the courage, to walk in the
Lord’s presence, with the cross of the Lord; to build the Church upon the blood
of the Lord, which was poured out on the cross; and to confess the only glory
there is: Christ crucified. And in this way the Church will go forward.”
Friends, all of us must walk, at one
time or another, through what Psalm 23 calls the valley of the shadow of death,
when the clouds of doubt and discouragement seem to shut out the sunshine of
God’s love. When we wonder why that should be so, why we cannot have a religion
of Easter only, without Good Friday, we need to remember: Jesus could not have
that. Neither can we. Take the cross out of our faith, and you have ripped the
heart out of it. Good Friday and Easter belong together. Behind the cross of
Good Friday, we must see the open portal of the empty tomb. And through that
open portal of Easter morning, we must always see the cross, where Jesus
offered all for us, even life itself.
That is where all the great lessons
of life are learned: at the foot of the cross.
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