Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR A TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY - 28.8.05 Jer 20,7-9; Rom 12,1-2; Mt 16,21-27 The
cup of suffering for Jesus & us The
cup of suffering for Jesus. Mel Gibson’s Movie, in all its gruesome aspects has made it clear to
millions of believers & unbelievers that Christianity is a religion where
suffering is part of God’s plan. Today’s Gospel reading follows immediately
after the passage we read last Sunday, where Peter acknowledged Jesus as the
‘Son of the Living God’ and Jesus proclaimed Peter as ‘The Rock on which
the Church will be built & against which no power of hell will prevail:
indeed as the man who would keep the Keys of the Kingdom. At this point, Matthew
introduces the turning point in the life of Jesus, of Peter & of
Christianity. At Caesarea Philippi, immediately after being acknowledged as
‘Son of the Living God’, Jesus made it clear that ‘the Son of man’ must
accept the cup of suffering and thus fulfil the role of ‘suffering servant’
& ‘man of sorrows’, foretold by the Prophets in Old Testament times. It
was God’s plan that Jesus went to Jerusalem, not as a triumphant conqueror
-this had never been God’s plan for our salvation-, but to suffer & die.
In the face of this gruesome future, it is not only Peter who objects but the
Apostles, & Matthew’s community, & we Christians of all time: we all
are perplexed and ask: was it really essential that God’s plan would be
fulfilled through the horrendous suffering, the description of which Mel Gibson’s
movie has made us shiver, refrain from watching, rebel & shed tears of
compassion? As I went to watch the movie, I came out saying: Lord was I really
worth that much to you?... Today, many of us continue to agree with Peter, in
saying that the gruesome Passion & Cross should never have happened to our
Lord; but then we also deserve the same harsh condemnation that Jesus ever
spoke... The
cup of suffering is also for us. Central to Christianity is a conviction that suffering has a redeeming
role in our life. Just as Peter was warned by Jesus, so are we in today’s
Gospel: no Christian can set his mind to seeing things from a human point of
view, we must all seek to discover God’s mind & his mysterious wisdom
about suffering. Yes, not just Jesus, but we too must shoulder our cross, and
carry it as Our Lord carried his. Yes, as in the story of the Man from Cyrene,
-so graphically detailed in Mel Gibson’s movie-, we help Jesus carry his cross
& in return the Lord helps us carry our cross. The graphic details of
Mel’s movie helps us understand how in Christ, God has established his New
Covenant: in the death of Christ on the cross, we discover that God is
infinitely rich in compassion & his love is unconditional. Across the
centuries, many men & women have been struck first and then fired with love,
in contemplating the profound wisdom hidden in the mystery of the cross. St Paul
is the first in a long chain of saints, to respond with a heart set on fire,
& with truly inspiring words. In Rom, 8,32ff, he exclaims: ‘God did not
spare his own son, but he gave him up to benefit us all... how can he now refuse
us anything?... & how could Christ condemn us?, when not only he died on the
cross for us, he also rose for us, & now he pleads for us, as he sits at
God’s right hand. Yes!, nothing
will separate us from the love of Christ... nothing can ever come between us
the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord’. The Bible
presents God’s immense love in Christ, with the word: Charity (‘Charitas’),
a word packed with energy & fire: from it the word ‘Grace’ comes with
its sense of God’s own freely given gift. Like Paul, many saints chose the
word ‘Charitas’ to encapsulate their excitement & enthusiasm about
‘God’s immense charity’, and
to adopt it as their coat of arms and program of life. ______________________________________ |
