Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
/Dominica XXIV per Annum B
15 September 2024
The Gospel passage is St. Mark’s accounting of the first of three predictions of the Lord’s passion. The Lord wants to know who people say he is. We can learn a lesson from this passage that it is not sufficient to simply identify Jesus, or to know his Name, or to claim that he is the Christ. In order to benefit from relationship with the Lord, a disciple must be able to not only identify Jesus and use his title “Christ”; the disciple must also accept the content of how Jesus will be the Christ. The disciple must also be conformed to the same way of life.
We learn that there is more than just being able to name Jesus, or call him one’s Lord and the Christ, from how Jesus teaches that he must suffer greatly, be rejected, be killed, and rise again. That lesson is brought into sharper focus still when the Lord rebukes Peter for rejecting how he will be the Christ. Peter’s refusal to accept how the Lord will be the Lord is met with those stinging words: “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter wants to tell the Lord how things should be and how to accomplish his mission. We have to rebuke that same tendency in ourselves to think as human beings do when we seek to avoid struggle and suffering, meanwhile being very quick to satisfy our every desire with all the things of this life that feel good. The Lord’s description that he must suffer, die, and rise tells us that the way of suffering is not just a circumstance of his life, it is not just something passive that happens to him. Rather, he must suffer, die, and rise. That tells us that this path of suffering is a necessity and the precise manner in which he will fulfill his mission. And to be clear, the mission is not simply the suffering, but it is always connected to the resurrection.
We learn still more in this passage. Namely, we are taught that the disciple must imitate the Lord and must be conformed to his way of life. That means that the way of suffering is not just a secondary, or a passive circumstance for us either. We cannot call upon the Lord using his Name and acknowledging his title as “Christ” in any meaningful way if we do not also accept in our own lives that path of suffering leading to resurrection. It must be a way of life for us too. That way of suffering is not to be viewed as some fatalistic nihilism where we think of ourselves as worthless. No, we are beloved children of God. We must rather grow in trust in God and recognize that, in a fallen nature, we can easily feed every whim and desire we have, we can keep the body feeling satisfied, while being far less dedicated to putting our own sin to death. In falling to that easy tendency to have everything this life can offer, we end up on the mistaken path of saving our life here, only to lose it in the life to come. But in conforming ourselves to the suffering Lord as a path we, too, must follow, we are able to lose the temporary values of this life and be saved for the life to come. In this insistence of Jesus we learn that there are two meanings of “life”. We see this in other passages of the gospels too. There is natural life in this earthly realm. But there is also supernatural life in the world to come. We are mistaken and lost if we seek only to feed our natural life here and now. The necessary path to the supernatural life of salvation is to imitate Jesus in his suffering, death, and resurrection.
Our lives here, then, should be marked by penance and mortifications that help us train ourselves in trust of God and in disciplining the ways we seek to be full of passing goods in this life. A disciple is not on the path of the Lord if he fills up every natural desire and meanwhile makes his life seem “spiritual” by using Jesus’ Name or calling him the Christ. What we say with our lips needs to be backed up with its full meaning. The Lord teaches us today how he will be the Christ and therefore how we must be Christians. The attempt to have it another way is asking for the same type of rebuke Peter received. We must avoid the trap of thinking only as human beings do.
The way of a disciple is not a passive thing by which we simply use the title Christian. Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to come after me”. That term “wishes” indicates an active desire to live a saved life. Being passive as a Christian or wearing the title Christian like a label does not work. We likewise must train ourselves through the difficulties of life (and we can admit how difficult this work is) to grow in trust of the Lord whatever may come, whatever the struggles and sufferings, whatever the crosses are. When we practice penance and mortifications – and not only in the season of Lent to be clear! – we are being conformed to the Lord. When we repent of our sins and the ways we give so much attention to our natural life, to the detriment of supernatural life, we are embracing the cross. What our lips speak about Jesus being the Lord and master of our life must be backed up by action. That’s perhaps why the Church chooses the second reading for today from St. James, who writes: “faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead”. What our lips speak about Jesus must be backed up by how we commit to Sunday worship. That we say that Jesus is the Christ is backed up by how we use our treasures and give sacrificially to others. It is backed up by how we vote our values so that the world is ordered in greater conformity to God’s kingdom. We profess that Jesus is the Christ, and we truly mean it, when we deal a lethal blow to our sins, and live our vocations in a way pleasing to God. What we say on our lips is backed up when we stop wasting so much time with frivolity in entertainment and social media, while claiming we don’t have enough time for prayer or the life of the soul. We are taught that “to think as God does” means that the Son of Man must suffer and then rise again. Whoever wishes to come after him… must do the same.