[Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A]
Have you ever felt like the prophet Jeremiah? Duped by God? Deceived or forgotten? A victim of derision and reproach, as Jeremiah says?
I dare say that all of us at one point in our lives (or at different moments throughout our lives) have shared Jeremiah’s sentiments. We too have wondered where God is, why God has abandoned us, why God hasn’t descended from heaven with a magic wand to heal all our wounds, solve all our problems and lift up all our burdens. At times we too feel duped by God.
Some of you may be wondering this right now as you face a particularly difficult challenge: a death in the family, a personal illness, unemployment, marriage troubles, a strained relationship, worries about your children, doubts about the faith.
When we feel burdened and abandoned like Jeremiah, the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel give us consolation and hope, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
Our Savior, though hesitant at the Garden of Olives, was not afraid of suffering and He picked up His cross. He experienced abandonment, burden, derision, and reproach. To the world He was duped by God. But He knew that by picking up His cross, by making His own the greatest challenge of His life, a good thing would come about. The greatest suffering by Jesus Christ, His Cross, brought us the greatest thing in history, salvation. This is the mystery of the cross.
Our Savior invites us to pick up our own personal cross and to follow him. If he asks us to pick up our cross, we must then identify our cross.
What is your cross? A hurt from the past, perhaps? Disappointments, an illness, a struggle, an addiction? What in your life causes you great pain and suffering? What cross has prevented you from trusting God? Jesus asks us to pick up our cross and to follow Him.
When we acknowledge our cross by picking it up, Jesus will help us carry it. He will give us strength, healing and grace so that our carrying of the cross may become a source of goodness. We will enter into the mystery of the cross by uniting our cross, our suffering, to the cross of Christ. Look at our crucified Lord, He was not afraid of His Cross, so neither should we. Life is difficult, Jesus knows this from personal experience, and he tells us that by embracing our cross we can find salvation. We cannot be afraid of suffering like Peter who told Jesus to run away from his impending suffering. The embracing of our cross will bring about something good in the same way Jesus’ embracing of His cross brought about something good.
There is a false notion out there in some mainstream Christian groups that faithfulness to Christ will automatically make all your troubles go away. But in the Gospel Jesus tells us to carry our crosses, not to throw them away.
Some people ask themselves, I have done everything right with the Lord, why am I now suffering this horrible illness? Others ask themselves, I always made the right decisions, why is God now punishing me?
You see, Jesus does not promise to take our cross away, we cannot run away from suffering. Faithfulness to Christ does not make us immune to suffering. Jesus Himself was not immune to suffering. We heard clearly in the Gospel that He asks us to carry our cross! Not throw it away! Jesus doesn’t promise to make our troubles go away. Rather, Jesus promises us that he will help us in our daily crosses which are part of life by giving us healing, grace and strength so that we may gracefully face the troubles of life.
Jesus does not promise to come down with a magic wand to make our crosses disappear. He asks us to carry our cross and to follow Him. We should not be afraid of the suffering of the cross, we should embrace it.
The great Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila wrote 500 years ago, “Let nothing upset you, let nothing startle you. All things pass; God does not change, patience wins all it seeks. Whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone is enough.”
Truly God alone is enough. As we face the struggles and crosses of life, we must remember that all things pass and that if we have God, we lack nothing, that God alone is enough.
By offering our sufferings to God and carrying our cross in the same way Jesus offered His sufferings to God and carried his cross, God can achieve great things. We must place our trust in the Lord and carry our cross diligently.
May this Eucharist, our food for our earthly journey, strengthen us so that we may joyfully embrace our cross as Jesus did and become stronger disciples of Christ.
Picture: From the Stations of the Cross in Lourdes, France.
Pictures are mine, all rights reserved.
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