24th Week of Ordinary Time
Isaiah 50:4c–9a
Psalm 116:1–2, 3–4, 5–6, 8–9
James 2:14–18
Mark 8:27–35
The deepest truth of the human person can only be understood by God. We do not even understand our own persons, except when God reveals us to ourselves. Jesus Christ is God’s self-revelation and He serves as the mirror in which we can discover our deepest identity. This message is profound. It is a subtle truth that can be understood only by humbly submitting to it and daring to look into the mirror with openness to whatever is revealed.
Jesus spends time with His disciples, little by little making Himself known to them. He never steps back from asking challenging questions or from responding with a harsh correction when it is needed. When He takes the twelve to Caesarea Philippi, He is ready to confront them with the hardest truths that they must accept so that they may truly be His disciples. “But who do you say that I am?” is the question that opens up the revelation of His identity.
Peter gets it: “You are the Christ.” Then Jesus goes on immediately to tell them the journey that the Christ must take: “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.” At this point, Peter misses completely what the disciples are meant to learn, and he begins to rebuke Jesus. This calls out the most intense reaction of Jesus to his misunderstanding: “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
To get God right, we must pass through a journey of faith and even of suffering. To be in a living relationship with Jesus means that we must understand Him in His own terms. This lesson is learned not simply by hearing it and accepting it as a truth outside ourselves, but by allowing it to be our very way of living. Jesus teaches His own disciples and everyone who hears Him. “He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.’”
Isaiah’s Song of the Servant offers a perspective on the attitude that will enable us to follow through with our desire to be disciples. “The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.”
We must hear and listen to the truth. When we have doubts and misunderstandings, we must move beyond the temptation to turn away or to rebel, accepting the consequences, the cross that is our own to carry. Trusting in God’s grace, we must strengthen our resolve by looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promise of relationship that lasts forever.
The choice that must be made is personal: “I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.” Each disciple is called to believe in Jesus as the Christ who experiences the paschal mystery, suffering, death, and Resurrection. Each disciple must follow, accepting the cross that is part of that personal choice. Each disciple must prove his or her resolve by a witness of faith that perseveres in time and into eternity.
Jesus asks: “Who do you say that I am?” Who is He to you, and who does He reveal you to be? Are you ready to follow and to walk before the Lord in the land of the living?