Gospel Commentary Aug. 30, Mt
16:21-27
It’s a shocking scene. Peter, just having heard Jesus foretell
his coming suffering, death and resurrection for the first time, takes Jesus
and rebukes him. “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” It seems
like a loving concern the disciple has for his Master. But Peter is thinking as
men do, not as God does. He does not realize the true nature of Jesus’ mission
and that it involves suffering, dying and rising again.
Peter is standing — spiritually,
and even physically — in the wrong
place. Hence Our Lord’s response: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to
me.” Peter does not belong in front of Jesus, standing as an obstacle in the
way of his journey to Jerusalem and the cross. He belongs behind him, following
as a disciple. Each of us is probably ready and willing to learn from St.
Peter’s mistake and say, “Lord, I never want to get in your way. Help me always
to step aside, not to prevent you from doing what you need to do.”
But wait, there’s more. Jesus says to Peter and the other apostles,
and indeed to anyone of any time who wishes to be his disciple: “If any man
would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
It’s not enough to get out of his way, standing to the side to let him do what
he needs to do. It is not passive. You too must take up your cross and follow
him. Jesus’ “doing what he needs to do” involves his doing that work within
each of us, not just for us from a distance.
The way Jesus speaks of the cross here makes clear it isn’t
optional. We need it. It has a saving effect for us. Even though we have been
washed of the guilt of original sin by the waters of baptism and thus restored to
friendship with God, the “poisonous roots of sin remain deeply planted in human
nature,” writes the author Father Edward Leen. “Man, even when he has been
readmitted to the divine presence, retains a fatal tendency to tear himself
away from God, his true happiness, and turn toward creatures that lure him by a
mirage of bliss.” Our nature was not destroyed by sin, but it was deeply
wounded. We want to love, and yet there is a selfishness in us that can take
hold of that love and derail it. The cross is God’s remedy for this.
The cross comes in many forms. We may have romanticized
imaginings of it and how heroic we will look carrying it. But the real cross
might be so dull and uninteresting that we don’t recognize it when it comes. It
may seem stupid and pointless that we have to endure it. It may be so brutally
unfair that we want to recoil and run away. Often, the cross that comes is not
what we would have chosen. We don’t design the path to holiness for ourselves.
This is part of what it means to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow
Christ. The cross means self-denial, and that is never pleasant.
Having to endure suffering, especially when it’s not the kind of
suffering that we want to endure, purifies our love. At least, it can have that
effect. Alternatively, it can make us bitter and cold. It’s one thing to
suffer, and that is something we all do. There’s no escaping it. It’s another
thing to suffer well.
Either our hearts grow more callous as we resent our situation,
or we soften and become more open to God’s work within us. Either we close up
out of an instinct to preserve ourselves from all suffering and discomfort — and as Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to save his
life will lose it” — or we look outside
of ourselves to love God and others — “but
whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Suffering, obviously, really hurts. But in a way, it carves out
something inside of us. It creates room for God to fill us with love, so long
as we don’t collapse in on ourselves. Suffering can, if we let it, break
through the hardness of our selfishness and make us more docile to being formed
and fashioned by God.
Fr. Oetjen is parochial vicar of St. James Church in
Falls Church.