TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME AUGUST 31, 2014
If we are honest with ourselves, we know that each of us has different aspects to our personalities – some we like and some we don’t like. In fact we can even have opposite feelings about the same thing at the same time. We are indeed complex human beings.
I was really struck by that in today’s gospel reading. If you recall last week, Peter makes a profound profession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus confirms that faith as a gift from God. Then in today’s gospel we have just the opposite. Jesus is sharing something important and I am sure very painful with the apostles: that He has to suffer and die at the hands of the chief priests and scribes in order to fulfill his mission. Peter, with all his faith, is horrified by this and out of his protective love for Jesus says: God forbid; No such thing will happen to you. But Jesus responds: Get behind me Satan – a clue that this is indeed a temptation that the devil has been placing before Him. Jesus doesn’t dismiss Peter but uses the opportunity to remind Him that following Christ isn’t always easy. That crosses come our way and we need to take them up to follow Him.
God understands each of us in all our complexity and HE uses every element of our personalities to spread His word in our world.
So today let us bring ourselves before, warts and all, and know that God’s unconditional love accepts us and transforms us into bearers of that Word to one another.