🙏 SUNDAY INSIGHTS - THE 22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 🙏

First Reading - Jeremiah 20:7-9 

Second Reading - Romans 12:1-2 

Gospel - Matthew 16:21-27

Twenty-three-year-old Valerie Price went to Somalia to work as a nurse. She wanted to help people who had nothing. She wanted to offer them a better way of life. Valerie was concerned about her safety, but nothing could stop her from doing her work. She was put in charge of a feeding center in Mogadishu. Through her efforts, children who had been near starvation were fed. Valerie even established a school so the children could learn and have some hope for the future. She became nationally known for her committed service. Valerie, however, was killed by armed bandits outside the school she had started. She was willing to risk her life to help other people.

The readings remind us that Christians are called to live their lives in a different way from others around them. Christian discipleship demands honesty, the willingness to suffer (“take up your cross”), generosity (“to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God”), and readiness to follow Jesus by obeying his commandment of love. Today’s readings also explain how this Christian mission should be accomplished. They explain how we should know and live the will of God, accepting the suffering involved in doing so. These readings tell us as well that while suffering is an integral part of our earthly life, it is also our road to glory. There is no crown without a cross. 

Jeremiah, in the first reading, is a certainly a prototype of the suffering Christ. He tried to live the will of God bravely facing confrontations and persecution, and he continued to proclaim His message because the message itself “becomes like a fire, burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”

In the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 63), the Psalmist sings, “O God, You are my God Whom I seek; for You my flesh pines and my soul thirsts, like the earth parched, lifeless and without water. … You are my Help, and in the shadow of Your Wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to You: Your right hand upholds me.” 

In the second reading, Paul advises the Romans and us (Rom 12:1-2): to ‘’offer our bodies as a living sacrifice” to God by explicitly rejecting the ungodly behavior of the world around us and by discerning and doing the will of God. He learned from his experience that commitment to God’s will required an attitude of non-conformity to one’s contemporary culture and drew hostility and physical danger on him because of his fidelity to Jesus.  

In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes his disciples by surprise when, after Peter’s great confession of Faith, Jesus “began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” After correcting Peter’s protest, Jesus announces the three conditions of Christian discipleship: “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” Unless we constantly remind ourselves of the demands of this difficult vocation from God, we will fail to be the kind of disciples that Christ expects us to be.

Dear friends, how can we describe true disciples of Christ? Certainty it strikes out by their lives, such as: a) truly compassionate: they are willing to visit the infected and the sick in hospitals, the incontinent elderly, the handicapped, and those who suffer dementia in nursing homes, and AIDS patients in hospices; b) truly humble: they are able to see that every good gift comes from God alone, and that His gifts to us of time, personal talents, and resources should inspire gratitude, not pride; c) truly patient: they are committed to working with challenging children, adolescents with problems, young adults who are struggling with their Faith, with the intellectually challenged, and with those suffering dementia; d) truly forgiving: they are willing to forgive, not just once or twice but again and again, because they know that God has forgiven them again and again;e) truly loving: they willingly visit people in prisons, in retirement homes, and in homeless shelters; f) truly faithful: they are living out a committed, trusting relationship with God, with spouse, with family and friends.

We need to ask these questions as we examine our conscience. A true disciple examines his or her conscience every day asking three questions about discipleship: a) Did I sacrifice a part of my time, talents, and income for my parish and the missionary activities of the Church? b) Did I practice self-control over my thoughts, words, deeds, and use of mass media, and put loving restriction on the cell phone and Internet activities of my children? c) Did I train my children in my Faith in a loving, providing, redeeming God by encouraging them as we spend some time together as a family praying and reading the Bible and by teaching them through example and word to pardon each other, to ask for God’s pardon for our own sins and failures, to thank God for His blessings and to participate in the Sunday school classes and youth programs?