25th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Wisdom 2:12. 17-20; 3:16 – 4:3; Mark 9:30-37

A God who suffers – how can this be?
A God who is servant – that’s too much for me!

The question ‘Who do you say I am?’ was correctly answered by Peter last week. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit he stated: You are the Christ.

Jesus immediately orders them, and orders them strictly, not to tell anyone about him because another important question remains unanswered, ‘What is the Christ?’

The word Christ is Greek for the word Messiah. It was in common usage in Jesus’ day but it had been given meanings which Jesus did not want to associate with himself. Many people, for example, were looking forward to a political Messiah, while others thought he might be a military hero.

So Jesus had to define the word rather than let it define him. How could he expect his disciples to follow him if they were not sure of his identity? How could they announce the Messiah if they were not sure of his nature?

Peter had already shown his limited, human understanding when he made it clear he did not want a suffering Messiah. Jesus rebuked him quickly; then he set about instructing them.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly.

When Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, came to the cinemas I was warned to take a box of tissues. ‘Oh, it’s so heart-wrenching, so sad. They just went on scourging him, it was terrible, I cried and cried.’

Well, I didn’t take any tissues, though I did have a handkerchief in my pocket, and I did find it heart-wrenching, but in a surprisingly different part of the movie. What brought a lump to my throat and moisture to my eyes were the little snippets of scenes in which Jesus was instructing his disciples; for some reason I found those enormously moving. Perhaps you did too.

To hear the word of God from the lips of the Word of God must have been a wonderful experience. Hebrews 4:12 reminds us: The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts.

When Peter heard the Lord predict his passion he had what we might call a ‘Hebrews moment'. He was not ready for a suffering Messiah. Jesus’ words slipped into that part of Peter he still needed to come to terms with, and the ever-honest Apostle reacted instantaneously. It had never entered his head that suffering might be part of the salvation the Messiah was to bring. Jesus was adamant, however, that no one would form, or shape, or instruct the Messiah; the Messiah would form them.

This is a good place to pause and ask ourselves the very challenging question, ‘Do I know the Christ, or do I follow a Christ of my own making?’ Many times have I heard Catholics, even priests, say that Jesus never judged, and that he never excluded anyone. Others say Jesus will never let a soul go to Hell. Others again, say that Jesus wants women priests and approves of homosexual activity.

To follow a Christ who never allows a soul to go to hell is a vastly different thing from following a Christ who, on the last day, when he returns in glory, will send to hell all those who have died wilfully rejecting him.

Is your Messiah the true Messiah? Is your Jesus the real Christ? I follow the Jesus presented to me by his Church, the Catholic Church – through her Scriptures and her Tradition, through her magisterial teachings and through her sacramental worship. For me, the true Jesus is to be found only in the Catholic Church; in other places he is at best, incompletely known or, at worst, a parody of the real Lord.

Today Jesus continues his teaching and moves from a suffering Messiah to a servant Messiah. He catches his disciples arguing about who is the greatest. How embarrassing! He asks them: What were you arguing about on the road?

Mark reports: They said nothing .. the silence of shame. I would safely say that most of us here have experienced this guilty silence somewhere in our lives.

• A young child - did you hit your sister? Silence …
• A teenager - did you smoke again after you promised you wouldn't? Silence …
• A shop assistant – did you steal? Silence ...

This silence comes when we are stared at by truth. Wrong suddenly acquires its true character and accuses us when Jesus is present. Like the sudden awkwardness when we realise we are dressed too casually for a formal dinner. In the presence of God we become conscious.

They were arguing about who was the greatest. How silly they must have felt, how vulnerable! How gently and lovingly Jesus corrects and instructs!

So he sat down, called the Twelve to him and said, 'If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all'. He then took a little child, set him in front of them, put his arms round him, and said to them, 'Anyone who welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me'.

When he teaches them about himself he is teaching them what they must become; when he corrects their behaviour he is teaching them who he is; when we meditate on his teaching and put it into practice, we become like him.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Job 38:1,8-11; 2 Corinthians 5:14-17; Mark 4:35-41

Jesus came to lead his followers to his Father’s Kingdom. His concern was to make them spiritual men and to ground their spirituality in the truth.

Already we must pause and take note that many people claim to be spiritual, even deeply spiritual, but their spirituality has been somehow ambushed by false teaching, human teaching, and actually leads nowhere. I recall a woman who asked me to attend her sick husband who, she claimed, was deeply spiritual. It turned out he studied at some length the Star Signs column that appeared in the daily paper. It all seemed to begin and end there.

Jesus’ mission was to bring mankind to the fullness of truth; no easy task.

To open the eyes of a man born blind was far easier than opening the stubborn or obtuse eyes of those among whom he walked. It seems that he failed with some, but his genuine followers soon began to learn that the Kingdom of God was among them. And so, as they accompanied their Master from village to village, heard his instruction and witnessed his actions, they began to see that he was the Teacher of the Truth they longed to learn. They opened their hearts and minds to him and learned to trust him, though not without doing violence to their own preconceptions.

Jesus always seemed to be catching them by surprise. It was as if, in their walk with him along the familiar pathways of their world, he would, every now and then, and unexpectedly, nudge them off the track into the rough terrain of the unknown. In this respect Jesus would have been a most disconcerting companion to travel with. Just when everything is going so well he says: Let us cross over to the other side. Oh dear! What’s he up to now? Couldn’t he have waited till morning? Doesn’t he see there is a storm brewing?

Jesus’ whole aim was to show them who he was and that he had been sent to bring them to God. When he fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, when he walked on the water, when he healed the cripple with a word or the haemorrhaging woman simply by allowing her to touch him, he was showing himself to be the Lord, the one God, walking in their midst as a man.

If the Apostles were slow to catch on we should be grateful for the mirror they hold up to us. We cling to the material world whose comforting solidity directly under our feet seems far more real than the promises of the Spirit. What is the eternal measured against the here and now? What is faith in God compared to these gigantic waves breaking into the tiny boat? Are these waves the truth, or is it the sleeping Jesus in the stern?

So Jesus rebukes the waves and then he rebukes his anxious disciples. Quiet now! Be calm! The command could be equally applied to his companions in the boat but Jesus speaks it to the turbulent sea.

To his Apostles he asks a question which should resonate in each one of us present here today because it is actually addressed to each one of us: Why are you so frightened?

The Apostles might have answered, ‘Well, Lord, you saw the size of the waves and you saw the size of the boat and you know we were on the point of sinking.’ And Jesus might have said ‘Yes, I did. So why are you so frightened?’

When the promises of Jesus meet the concrete circumstances of the world we live in we all need to make this choice – where is our true safety? Where is our true life?

I spoke to a woman once who was about to have an abortion. She told me there was nothing wrong with the baby but she was afraid because the doctors had told her there was a serious risk she and the child might die if she proceeded. I could almost see the gigantic waves pounding her little boat. What would the Lord have said? Most certainly he would have asked: Why are you so frightened?

Jesus plainly said: For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it (Mtt 6:25). This is not just a nice thing to say, it is the truth, the truth which we are all called to live.

The martyrs for the faith were warned not of the risks, but of what would most certainly happen; they would be shot, beheaded, hanged, crucified, eaten by animals, and so on. They joyfully made their choice and were not frightened by suffering or death. They put their trust in Jesus.

Jesus asks his student Apostles: How is it that you have no faith? He had nudged them off the path into new territory and had discovered their faith was not sufficient. This is a discovery we all make from time to time and we should not be ashamed if the experience leads to a deepening of trust.

They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’ One thing is for sure, the Apostles, and hopefully we, have learned that where the Lord is, there is nothing to be afraid of.