Readings - http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082811.cfm
We are coming to the end of a summer that hopefully was a time of rest and refreshment. During this time, we’ve been fed here each Sunday by a nice set of Readings that gently invited us to reflect on some of Jesus’ parables, some of Jesus’ most famous miracles and finally on two professions of faith of people living in Jesus’ time, the first a simple Canaanite woman (who wasn’t even expected to have faith in Jesus) and the second being of St. Peter, a profession of faith for which Jesus blesses him and promises to build his Church upon him.
Today the Readings become rapidly much bleaker. And they perhaps remind us why it is important to have times of rest and refreshment in our lives, and why it is perhaps important for us to gently learn our faith in those times, because not all life will be easy.
Immediately after St. Peter’s profession and Jesus’ blessing of him for having made it, Jesus tells his disciples that they are going to head to Jerusalem, that he, Jesus will be arrested there by the chief priests and scribes and he will killed (but that this will not be the end, that “after three days, he will raised”).
St. Peter’s head spinning from first the blessing that he received and then from Jesus’ subsequent words tries to tell Jesus “don’t talk like that.”
Jesus instead reprimands the future St. Peter for trying to dissuade him telling the truth (even if it seems like hard/bad news). And then reminds everyone no one is ‘fit to be a disciple of his unless they are willing to take up their cross and follow him.’
Wonderful. What to make of this?
Well it strikes at the heart of Jesus’ mission. If life were always okay, if there was no suffering that we experienced in this world, then there’d be no reason for Jesus to come. He came precisely because all of us will experience pain, difficulty, betrayal, and yes, death, during the course of our lives.
So the Cross will be part of our lives whether we like it or not.
Hopefully though there will also be times like this summer (or other summers) that will be times of gentleness and rest for us, in which we can reflect on our relationship with God without great stress and thus be ready when the hard times come.
I also know very well, that for some here, this summer has been _really difficult_, despite the gentleness of the Readings heard here during this time. We all walk together but we’re all also on our own paths, and God comes to us with various challenges at various times. So yes, every year some of us are presented with challenges that others may not face for a while (or may have faced some years before).
Still hopefully all of us will have had times of tranquility in our lives (and perhaps _come to appreciate_ those times of tranquility when they are with us) because these times can help us have strength to meet the challenges, the difficulties, the Crosses that will inevitably come our way.
So as we approach the end of this summer, for those of us form whom this summer was peaceful and gentle let us give thanks for that. Let us then pray for those for whom this time has _not_ been so gentle or has really been a time of great difficulty. And finally let us give thanks to a God who came to us precisely to give us strength for the times of difficulty in our lives.
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