Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mass Celebrated by Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne,
on Sunday, 28th August, 2005, at 11.00am

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, after his acknowledgement that Jesus is God, Saint Peter started to remonstrate with him about his destiny to suffer. Our Lord’s retort, ‘Get behind me Satan’, is a reminder that we too are only disciples.

It is in enduring suffering that we find the Lord speaking and guiding us to a destiny that he has planned from all time, but which is open to our free will and dependent upon a readiness to say yes.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Last Sunday we read of the proclamation of Jesus’ Divinity made by Peter at Caesarea Philippi. Peter appears there as the very model disciple and yet a very real example for us. There is a contrast between his obvious impetuous faith and his inability to live it. The contrast between Peter’s faith and his lack of ability to put it into practice is just as striking as on the occasion when he walked on the waters.

Jesus has just been acknowledged by Peter as the Christ. Yet, it is interesting to note how Peter understood the Christ; obviously, in Peter’s mind, in the glory of a triumphant kingdom. Yet what does Jesus do? He reveals himself as the suffering servant.

Jeremiah, seduced by the Word of God, was ridiculed and condemned to suffering, Jesus comes up with startling words, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

The challenge is that the true disciple is one who loses life in following Christ, because Jesus becomes all absorbing and challenging.

Dom Helder Camara, the Brazilian Bishop, who campaigned for justice and truth, understood that Jesus’ challenge of losing one’s life was not only in the supreme act of martyrdom. Indeed, losing one’s life also includes that willingness to surrender to God all we are, all we hope for and all we become.

Taking up one’s cross can sometimes seem in our mind the embracing of suffering in a distant country or at a distant time. The cross for you and for me is the cross of everyday, of our own failure and inadequacy, of the things people do and say to us, of the fact that though inspired by the love of God – touched by it and nourished by him in the Eucharist – we never seem to get to our goal.

Our cross is faithfulness to the particular role that God has asked us to fulfil in this day and at this moment.

We are people of a promise. The service we offer to our society is that thirst for God mentioned in the Psalm or in the Alleluia, so that the eyes of our heart will be enlightened to see how great is the hope to which we are called. Because Peter thought to distract Jesus from Golgotha he had become a tempter. Whereas the cross is the climax of the life of Jesus and of us, because we have to live by his death to rise by his resurrection.

In 2001 Henri Nouwen wrote that Peter’s reaction is seen as the most dangerous of all for those who search for a truly spiritual life. Peter had yet to learn to think as God thinks, to surrender his own ideas, his own will, his own ways to God. He would eventually learn to do this and this brought him a share in the suffering of Jesus. By the time Saint Matthew’s Gospel was written true followers of Jesus had come to know the suffering, which is involved in surrender to Christ.

If we are sensitive to what God wants, we realise how many things are not happening in the way we hoped. People are not saying what we expected. The day is not evolving as we wanted. Disappointments, frustrations abound. Best-laid plans fall through. Yet these losses can set us free. We too have to surrender to Jesus and in that we will find our freedom.

To surrender our day, our time, to what he has for us, to what he plans. Then we will find an ability to show him to others, a greater peace that will inspire us and a surety of hope that we will offer to our brothers and sisters.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.