Year A Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63:2-6.8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

Following Jesus, being his disciple, is what it means to be a Christian. Where does Jesus lead those who follow him? To the cross.

While the Lord’s crucifixion was centuries away, the prophet Jeremiah experienced what the Lord, in today’s Gospel, tells his followers to expect. Despite himself, despite the ridicule he endures, Jeremiah can’t stop speaking. He can’t quit crying out. Try as he might to resist, he can’t quench the burning fire God places in his heart.

Now, we need to put what Jeremiah says into its proper context. He was calling Israel back to fidelity to her covenant with God. He warns his fellow Israelites of the consequences if they do not heed his inspired warnings. We know that the consequence was exile.

Despite his dire warnings, Jeremiah also spoke of hope through a new covenant God would establish. In addition to repatriation, God would, through this new thing, bring about internal transformation and a renewed relationship with his people.¹

It isn’t so much that God will directly punish them as it is that he will simply allow them to experience the natural consequences of their choices and actions. Even so, God remains merciful. God’s mercy is made evident by Israel’s return from exile. Instead of being absorbed into the Babylonian population, the Israelites maintained their unique identity as God’s people.

Being a Christian also means, as Saint Paul wrote in our passage from Romans, discerning God’s will. According to the apostle, the ability to know God’s will in the different circumstances life presents requires an internal transformation. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote about having the mind of Christ.²

It is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, that one has the mind of Christ. Hence, a Christian life produces the fruits of the Spirit.³ One of the fruits of the Spirit is patience. Patience is also the fruit of the fourth Sorrowful mystery of the Rosary; the mystery itself being Jesus carrying the cross.

In the Salve Regina recited at the end of each Rosary (and that we frequently sing at Mass), we cry to our Blessed Mother as Eve’s “poor banished children,” making our way through “this vale of tears.” Being a Christian doesn’t spare anyone life’s sorrows, disappointments, and trials. The Lord’s response to Peter in today’s Gospel should dispel any notions of that.

You don’t have to go looking for crosses to carry. Inevitably, life will provide in this regard. Patience in suffering is made possible by hope. Hope comes not just from knowing or being told that Christ walks with you. It comes from experiencing his presence during times of trial and uncertainty.

Vaclav Havel, a Czech dissident during that country’s years under authoritarian rule and who later served his country as president, put it this way:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons⁴

Taking Havel’s “take” on hope as her starting point, Tata Trapani observed:

Hope is the friend who sits with us in the dark, so we are not alone and shines for us so we can make it through. If we expect it to be more than this, we are doing it a disservice and we will always be crestfallen⁵

For Christians, hope is not merely a concept, an idea, an abstraction. Even to say that hope is the flower of faith, while a beautiful and, I believe, lovely and true image, is to pull up short. Logically, faith requires an object. In Christian terms, it requires a subject, that is, someone, not merely something.

For the Christian, this friend who sits with us in the dark and shines a light in that darkness has a name: Jesus Christ. And sometimes, more often than not I'd say, the Lord sends along friends, people, a person, someone willing to sit with us and shine a light in the darkness.

Turning to Havel again, hope “is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.”⁶ As human beings who bear the image of God, an image that cannot be eradicated, hope is a dimension of the soul. It is part of what it means to be human. Hope is that light, however dim or flickering, that keeps shining through the darkness, drawing our attention, even when completely distracted by circumstances.

Of course, the Lord doesn’t lead you to the cross to leave you there. He leads you there to take you beyond it, to life everlasting. But the only way beyond the cross is through it.

It’s easy to forget that Jesus’ cry of abandonment from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the beginning of Psalm 22.⁷ It’s even easier to forget that about two-thirds through, this Psalm turns from one of lament to one of joy, culminating with these verses:

For he has not spurned or disdained
the misery of this poor wretch,
Did not turn away from me,
but heard me when I cried out.
I will offer praise in the great assembly⁸

My dear friends, attend to hope. Foster hope in others. Be that friend willing to sit in the darkness, who, unlike Job’s friends, can offer encouragement even if only by your silent presence. Above all, patiently trust in the Lord, who is always true to his word. As Scripture exhorts: “Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”⁹

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1 Jeremiah 31:31-34.^↩
2 1 Corinthians 2:16.^↩
3 See Galatians 5:22-23..^↩
4 Vaclav Havel. Disturbing the Peace. Trans. Paul Wilson, 181-182.^↩
5 Tata Trapani. “Vaclav Havel on Hope.” Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology blog. 24 August 2023.^↩
6 Disturbing the Peace, 181-182.^↩
7 Psalm 22:2.^↩
8 Psalm 22:25-26.^↩
9 1 Peter 5:7.^↩