TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

22ND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A: ( Jer 20:7-9; Rom 12:1-2; Math 16:21-27)
Theme: We shall leave to God to think for us

Reflection:

- The readings that the Church propose for us today which is the continuation of the gospel of the last week, teach us that ‘we need worry about what to think… but we leave aside everything to become aware of what God thinks for u’.
- God is the one who takes initiative for our life and even our thoughts should be thrown into his; He thinks for us; He decides for us; He wills for us; Our task is just ‘to know and follow’ what he prepares for us;
- The preparatory part is God’s; let us not worry about what to prepare and how to prepare our life and its day today situations; God prepares and we follow; that should be the attitude we have to ‘learn’ today with the reflections of the readings;
- That is the ‘central message’ of the gospel today: “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Math 16:23). The closer translation could be: “you are a scandal to me; because you are not thinking as God thinks but as men”. Therefore, in the matters of God and the life he offers, it is better to leave God to think for us; if we try to think as we want ‘we’, or our thoughts, words and finally our life, would become a ‘stumbling block’ or a scandal;
- In a word: We have to leave everything of what we are to the ‘Will of God’. As Jesus somewhere says that ‘doing the will of his Father is his food’, so also we have to earn our food of life by ‘throwing ourselves into the net of the will of God’.

First Reading:

- Anxiety and the depression of the prophet Jeremiah:
o Jeremiah pleads for the help of God (or assurance of God’s help) over and over again in his prophecy; he knows that ‘proclaiming the word of God’ is not that easy and not that approachable; it has lot of consequences;
o Very soon he has come to realize that the people are stubborn and do not heed to him though he speaks, not his, but God’s word;
o The word of God is ridiculed; is belittled; is neglected; and is thrown away; the prophet no longer finds any use of speaking because the people are not only not ready but not in the grade of listening it either;
o We see this anxiety and pouring out of the sorrowfulness on the part of the prophet many a time even before this chapter; in the previous chapters we see how the prophet appeals or complaints to God the behavior and attitude of the people to whom he is sent;
- Not only the word proclaimed but the preacher himself becomes a scandal:
o The situation is changed, it has become worsened; it has moved still further in its brutal consequence ‘from not hearing the word to the rebuking and persecuting the preacher’;
o This made the prophet still more frightened and fearful; he wanted to escape the situation of proclaiming the word by fleeing away from the ‘will of God’.
o He himself denounces his persecutors with the anguish of fear and resentment: “For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction’ and the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (v.8).
o The presence of the prophet himself has become the ‘stumbling stone’ or ‘a scandal’ for the life of the people and for their attitude to exercise what they want; the prophet Jeremiah laments over this kind of situation in which he is found and pleads to God that he cannot anymore hold this task of preaching the word because ‘both the word and the preach have become a scandal’ for the impious people.

- But the Word is Proclaimed in anyway:
o In spite of its being hated and reproached, either the word or the prophet, the word continues to be proclaimed;
o The persecutions and the frightening moments in its preaching ‘cannot and should not block’ the task of being proclaimed; the word is in anyway proclaimed;
o The prophet, in spite, the rejections and condemnations he faces, has the ‘responsibility’ and ‘must situation’ to proclaim the word;
o The efficacy of the word is always present; if it is accepted it has its fruits of life and happiness; if rejected it has its consequences of condemnation; but God’s word is always effective and powerful in its movement towards its destiny;
o And the prophet is always ‘the voice and the word’ of God though there could be many stumbling stones and scandals that arise because of his preaching; because the nature of the word is to be proclaimed and the nature of the preacher is to proclaim; one cannot exist without the other and one cannot remain without effect in the presence of the other;

Second Reading:

- Spiritual worship:
o St. Paul helps us understand what is real worship and how can it be known as authentic and true;
o We have to offer our bodies and all that it contain - thus included the mind, heart and even soul, because all these realities are embodied in the human person – as the living sacrifice;
o A sacrifice is worthy of its name when it is ‘living’, ‘holy’ and ‘raised to God’. And all this is called, in the words of Paul, the spiritual worship;
o On one hand speaking of offering of the bodies, Paul speaks it of the ‘spiritual worship’ on the other hand; this signifies that in the offering of the body there is also the worship in the spirit just because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit as he says somewhere else (1Cor 3:16-17).
o Already the prophetic theology proposes an inseparable connection between the prayer and the life, between the liturgy and the justice (Hos 6:6; Is 1:10-20; Ger 7:21-25; Micah 6:6-8); and only with the donation of the entire existence our body can become “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19) in which the perfect ‘spiritual worship’ can be celebrated.
- From ‘Worship’ to the ‘Will of God’:
o This the journey that each individual Christian should make; he cannot remain in the level of worship and adoration; he has to move towards ‘living’ and ‘following’ what we have worshipped and adored;
o This journey is possible, as St. Paul indicates again, only in the transformation of our mode of thinking; we should not no longer be we who should think but it should be God thinking for us; this is the meaning of the renewing of our thinking;
o All this renewal and transformation is to discern the ‘will of God’ (v.2); ultimate end and destiny of all the forms of worship and renovation is to know the will of God and to follow it; and thus we move on to the concrete will of God from our temptation of mere prayer and simple worship;

Gospel:

- ‘Blessed Peter’ becomes ‘Satan’:
o Just few hours before Jesus called Peter ‘blessed’ (16:17) which we have reflected in the readings of last Sunday; Jesus appreciated and accepted the ‘revealed answer’ that has come from the mouth of Peter, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16) and for this answer, though a revelation from His Father, Jesus gives him the title, “blessed”: “Bless are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (16:17);
o This blessed peter and his ‘blessed words’ have disappeared in the matter of few minutes; Jesus continuing his discourse of mission which has to be completed in the death and resurrection that await him, foretells what is going to happen in Jerusalem (v.21). In fact, they are heading towards Jerusalem and Jesus explains the reason why they have to enter into it;
o The same Peter, who is usually in little hurry to answer and to give voice to all in the first place, speaks once again; of course, this time not with the help of revelation but with his own knowledge and interest for Jesus and we can also see the particular gesture proper to him: “(Peter) took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” (v.22). He takes Jesus aside as though he has something to tell him in secret or to tell him what has to be done;
o He has forgotten the meaning of the profession of faith he just has made: ‘You are the Messiah’; or he has not understood properly the exact meaning of the words he has used; Messiah is the one who saves; and Peter must have thought of the salvation in the manner of the world which is quite and completely different and distant from what Jesus has come to do;
o Therefore, Jesus calls him Satan to make the clear difference between “the revelation of the Father” and “the revelation of the flesh and blood”; thus between the ‘will of the Father’ and the ‘will of the world’; thus, finally, between ‘blessed of God’ and ‘the cursed of Satan’; and tells him: “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (v.23);
o Jesus does not just call him Satan without any reason; he immediately makes Peter know why he has called him in this way;
 Satan and his actions are always contrary to God’s and to the good actions; Satan is always at work to stop all the means that God provides for the salvation of man and proposes and stirs up the desires opposing to them; in one word, as Jesus says, Satan becomes the stumbling stone by blocking the ‘action of God’;
 Peter too, in the same way, was trying to block the designs of God for the mankind through the mission of Jesus, the Messiah; in this way Peter becomes the stumbling block for Jesus and the finally, with this kind of thinking and attitude, which Jesus tells him that he is not thinking as God thinks, Peter blocks the ‘will of God’;
o Will of God must take priority in everything that happens; when one tries to discern what could be the will of God (second reading) it is the real and true sacrifice that is made in the perfect spiritual worship.

- Pain of the Cross and the Gain of Life:
o Taking this situation and context into account, Jesus makes the discourse on the mission of the cross and self-denial the fruit/result of which would be the life and glory of God;
o This discourse on the donation of the self has three phases:
 ‘leaving the self and taking the cross’ (v.24): one has to leave aside what he thinks and what he will and has to be available for the ‘action of God’ and that is to take up the cross; cross is not just something painful and burdensome but it is ‘whole thought of God’ for us; it is not so easy to accept and carry what God thinks for us; thus, taking up the cross, in the higher manner, signifies accepting the ‘will of God’ for us;
 ‘save-lose’ – ‘lose-find’ life (v.25): complexity of words and confusion of the verbs and words; but the theology is very simple; Life is God’s donation; if we re-donate it for God it will be ours completely and for eternity; if we misuse it and offer to Satan and its action, we lose it permanently in this life and in the life to come; renunciation of the self and the donation of the self is not for ourselves, but, it has to be oriented (giving to other) towards the finding (v.25) the ‘treasure’ in the kingdom of God (Math 13:44);
 Economic terminology (v.26): the words that Jesus uses - such as ‘profit’, ‘gaining’, ‘losing’ and ‘change’ – seem to have character of economy which always deals with the ‘price’ and ‘profit’; by taking this aspect into consideration and using this terminology Jesus wants to declare that ‘no reality, even of highest splendor, can be equaled (compared) to the great gift of the ‘proper person’ who is inserted into the kingdom of God; in this context we can remember the words of Jesus himself who talks about the value and meaning of the person: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Math 6:26); for God human person is of more value and of highest honor just because He himself created him in his own ‘image and likeness’.

Conclusion:

- Complex reality has to turn into the clear way of life:
o Like Peter we too are, many a time, a complex reality; we often do good and exhibit our Christian and good conscience by being ‘faithful’ and ‘prayerful’ and thus we take the title of ‘blessed’ from Jesus; and on the other part, we more often we exhibit our too much preoccupation for the worldly thoughts and needs, which indeed are necessary and with the worry we have of them we tend to lose or give up our time for the things not necessary and finally find ourselves ‘lost in the pit of destruction’ and thus become also the ‘heirs of the evil’ and receive from Jesus the unwanted comment ‘Satan, you are a blocking stone for my actions’.
o We need not worry too much about this ‘doubled nature’; sometimes the situations and circumstance that surround us make us to be like this and we immediately blame them for our conditions; as long as we are in this world and live in the midst of ‘developed and developing attractions’ and ‘false ideologies’ we are dragged into them;
o We should not worry just because we are Christians and we do not belong to this world and to its traps; we are called and place above this world; the remedy for our condition is very simple:
 We have to see the reality and accept that we are and we are to be in this passing world;
 We have to, each moment of our life, keep on reminding ourselves ‘the life of grace we are called to’ and thus telling ourselves that we are ‘Christians’ and ‘the true followers of Christ’.
 We have to transform, finally, with the help and the strength of the ‘word’ and the ‘sacraments’, our thoughts into God’s and our will into God’s.
 In a word, we have to leave to God what he thinks for us;
o In this way we have to journey from the ‘status of complex reality of the self’ to the ‘clear way of the cross’ for the life of glory;

- Cross is our life and life is God’s gift and we have re-donate it to him:
o Cross is no more a stumbling block for those take it up and go behind the one who carries it for us, and thus ‘following Jesus’;
o The true happiness and true joy is present in the ‘donation of life’ for others; this is the true love which has no measures and which has no boundaries and Jesus tells “no one has greater love than giving his life for others” and finally we have to know the truth that ‘life is not ours’ but it is God’s. For this reason we are not able to balance our life as we want because every particle of the force has to come from the goodness of the Lord; Once we know this truth we offer this life back again to God from whom ‘all life comes’.
o The question of Jesus has to be posed each moment in our lives: “What can we give in exchange to the falling soul?” and this keeps us alive and active to heed to the will of God;
- Let us therefore, leave all our thoughts aside and ‘allow God think for us’ and this would be his will for us and ‘discerning the will of God for us and fulfilling it in our life offering our whole life’ would be the ‘highest and perfect spiritual worship’ (second reading), the worship which is ‘living, holy and raised to God’. Amen.