Fr. Jose Cecilio J. Magadia, SJ
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 13, 2015
“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first chapters of Mark presents Jesus in action – starting ministry after baptism, choosing apostles, teaching, healing, raising a little girl from the dead, feeding thousands, challenging the Jewish conventions of his day. All this builds up to the climax of the first part of the Gospel, where Jesus asks his disciples after having seen everything he has done, “Who do you say that I am?” It is Peter who gives the definitive answer: “You are the Christ”, the anointed one.
From this point starts the second part of Mark, as Jesus continues in his ministry, but now with a clear and specific direction – towards Jerusalem, the cross, the resurrection. After hearing who Jesus is, we see him fulfilling his mission, his identity, his prediction that he must be rejected and killed, and that he would rise again, the climax of the second part. Indeed, the world could not help but make way for this man who knew exactly where he was going.
Several striking points are worth noting about Jesus, that also give us pause to reflect on our own lives.
1. Jesus is a man on mission. He had a goal to achieve, and he pursued it with constancy and fidelity.
To live life with a sense of mission gives it meaning. It makes all that might follow a little more bearable. It gives energy. It is sad to see how so much energy is exerted in today’s world, but without direction, without mission.
2. Jesus’ mission is not the cross itself, but “to take up his cross”.
When we are faced with the challenges of life – a difficult problem, a terrible illness, a painful relationship, a sense of hopelessness – we might say that we just have to bear this cross. But for Jesus, it is more than that. Bearing the cross is embracing it, with conviction, with dignity, with all the strength he could muster, with an intentionality to see it through to the end. The first reading from Isaiah echoes this commitment: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard.”
So when those challenges do come, we might begin by just bearing with them, but we can pray that we might also choose to embrace them gracefully. What might begin as an unfortunate turn of events can then turn out to be the making of a deliberate choice.
3. Jesus’ desire was not just to suffer and die, and so to rise again. His desire was to enter fully into what it means to be human.
Pain and death complete the human experience of life and hope and happiness. Thus it was that when God chose to become man, he emptied himself completely of his divine powers and showed us how to die a dignified human death.
Solidarity, for some, is getting a taste of the experience of another; for Jesus, it was a complete immersion.
4. Jesus did what he did out of love. He lived in love, and he died for love.
Some say that fear is capable of pushing us to do things we might think we are not capable of. It has to do with more adrenaline being produced by the body in situations of stress, and the heart pumping faster, the pressure rising, and more oxygen and energy being delivered into the system.
Even more powerful than fear is love; but the dynamic is different. No adrenaline is produced; and we enter into a completely different dimension. A mysterious power takes over – that parents know well when they give up things for their children, that lovers know well when they stay up late to accompany those they love, that teachers know well when they take extra time to prepare for their students.
It is a mystery that cannot be explained. Some light is shed by John Lennon, who said, “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.”
I often wonder how much we do out of fear, and how much love comes into the things we do.
5. Jesus is telling us that we are really worth loving, and worth dying for.
The story is told in Jewish lore that when God decided to create man in his own image, he asked the angels to decide where to put the divine spark that would clearly mark this likeness. The angels, who were jealous of God’s special treatment of man, discussed among themselves where to put it. Some said high in the mountains, others said the bottom of the sea, and the smartest said, “Let’s bury it deep in the human heart, because there they would surely not find it!” And so it came to be.
It is not easy for us to see that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. But Jesus saw it clearly, and so, dying on the cross became worth every bit of it. Maybe we often do not see it; but if we just focus on who Jesus really is, God who became man and died for love not just of some, but of all, then maybe, we can likewise give up our lives in service – for the many refugees fleeing war, for children without food or shelter or education, for the dying in hospitals, for those in prison who wait in hope, for friends who desire to be listened to, for families in distress.
Jesus invites us to take up our crosses and follow him. As we try our best to do so, we might follow in the spirit of a short statement attributed to St Augustine – that we pray not so much for a lighter load, but for stronger shoulders!