Readings: Isaiah 50:4c-9a; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35
We have so often used today’s Gospel to support the particular role of the Pope in the Roman Catholic Church, that we might forget that it addresses every Christian and every Christian church, from the time of the Apostles to the end of time.
It could be plausible in the current crisis of Church leadership to consider whether the popes and bishops have been shouldering their cross. But I have no access to all the facts, and certainly, I have no window into their souls, to read the motivations of these men. I am not even familiar with them as individuals. It would be too easy for me to jump to conclusions and take the moral high ground in an area where I’ll never have any responsibility.
So at this hour, you and I will have to wait in prayer and receptivity, discerning God’s will for us and discerning our own responsibilities, especially in the areas of restitution and reconciliation, as due process now unfolds.
I direct our attention instead to Jesus’ words: Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.
How often have we heard this verse misapplied? Were I to say that the arthritis in my right knew is the cross I have to bear, I’d be misapplying this verse.
Likewise, any mortification I concoct for myself is not my cross. That’s totally dictated by me, just another control game.
Jesus’ cross was a serious life and death issue and a vocation that he freely embraced. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, for the sake of the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
The image evoked is from capital punishment: the convicted criminal carried the crossbeam of his cross, his conviction written on a tablet hung about his neck. At his crucifixion that tablet would be fastened above him to identify and shame him. That’s what was done to Jesus.
My cross, then, is given, not calculated by me, yet tailor-made to me, to my particular conflicts; but necessarily rooted in the mystery of Christ and embraced by me.
Engaging it could bring me to the throne of God; evading it would be walking out on God.
Peggy Anderson says
In light of your thoughts on the nature of one’s cross, I see that time spent discerning what my cross truly is at this time in my life is the next step for me. There are many things in life that are challenges, but perhaps not crosses with a big C.——Thanks for the homily, Fr. James.
Charles Stevenson says
As someone whose work and life have exposed him to a lot of children in a lot of pain, and as the father myself of a brutally abused and traumatized son who, in his early 40s, remains acutely disabled, I affirm the need for the street level “us” of the Church to move, proactively and firmly and now, to the basic tasks at hand: cherishing and helping heal the damaged and afflicted, and moving concretely to root out and eliminate the fundamental conditions that have made these appalling tragedies possible in the first place. For this, “waiting” is not an option.
Unraveling the interior dynamics of those active and complicit is a side issue, a labyrinth in which we can easily lose ourselves, for which we can wait. Is not our first concern the terrible effects they’ve had on others’ lives, and the forces, still with us, that may be driving similar tragedies, even this very minute, even now?