Homily: The Challenge of True Love

Below is my homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. It is based on these readings (Jer 20:7-9; Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27):

The most shocking thing about today’s gospel passage is that it follows immediately after last week’s reading. If you remember, last week Peter learned from our Heavenly Father that Jesus was, in fact, “the Christ, Son of the Living God.” Because Peter proclaimed that fact aloud Jesus praised him and chose him as the foundation for his Church.

This week, we continue reading right where we left off. There are three times in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus predicts, very clearly, that he will be crucified, will die, and will rise. Today’s passage begins with the first of those three predictions. Jesus’ preparation of the disciples for the coming crucifixion kicked into a higher gear with these verses as Jesus explained that he must go to Jerusalem. There, God’s plan demanded that he would suffer and be killed.

This was shocking news to the disciples and Peter objected, saying “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you,” to which Jesus answered “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Those are harsh words, indeed, and just moments after Jesus had been praising Peter! God’s chosen leader of the Apostles, his rock and the foundation of his Church had become a stumbling block, an obstacle, in the course of mere moments.

Jesus explained that Peter was no longer speaking as inspired by the Heavenly Father, but as inspired by Satan. One thing we know of Satan is that he is a liar.

The lie of Satan that Peter repeats here is that true love does not involve the cross. The Evil One, perhaps, also whispers lies into our ears about what Jesus is like, and how he should act. We often have dangerous preconceptions about Jesus.

For example, we often think of Jesus as a friendly guy who will take away all our worries and make everything easier, but that’s a lie.

The real Jesus makes us uncomfortable. To avoid feeling uncomfortable, then, we often settle for our own version of Jesus, a false version who suggests to us that, for example:

• It’s sufficient to confess sins directly to God, and that difficult, vocal Confession to a priest is unnecessary.
• It’s hard to make it to Sunday Mass with so much other stuff going on—Jesus understands.
• I don’t need to follow all those rules. I believe in God, I’m a spiritual person. All I need to do is have faith that Jesus is God, and he’ll do the rest.

But we must be careful here. Satan himself would love us to believe our own, distorted versions of Jesus. We need to ask ourselves, do we even know the true Jesus who speaks such discomforting words in the Gospel?

Every sin is a rejection of God—and we are not the judge of what constitutes a sin. Jesus Christ is, and at the end of today’s Gospel passage, he warned us that he will come and repay us all according to our conduct, not according to our rationalizations, feelings, or ideas about who he was and is.

The truth of Christ is challenging. Jesus tells us that to follow him, we must deny ourselves, take up (not just put up with, but take up) our crosses. He tells us that if we want to ultimately save our lives for eternity, we must lose them on earth by spending them in love of God and neighbor.

As we follow Jesus, we are promised that we will find exhaustion, pain, ridicule, and suffering. As Fr. Robert Barron put it, “In a world gone wrong, the divine love will typically meet with resistance.” Our cultures, our neighbors, our own aching bodies, our whole fallen world will often protest as we push ourselves to follow Christ. And when things get very hard we often ask, “How can God allow this?” At times like that, we’re listening to Satan’s lie that life will be easy.

We should not be surprised when we encounter the cross. Yet, if we obey Christ we will discover a deeper peace, a deeper joy, and a hope for eternity that is otherwise impossible.

The lesson here is that true love, the love of God we receive and which we are called to share with the world, is a self-sacrificing love. This love is experienced in a million ways, small and large. For example:

• A parent forgoing a favorite television show or ball game to spend time learning about the faith, so that the faith can be shared with the children.
• A caretaker of the handicapped who, at the end of the day, is exhausted after having spent the day in service of another.
• An elderly individual suffering with a painful illness offering their suffering, in union with Christ on the Cross, for the souls in purgatory or for family members who need their prayers.

And so on.

Jesus teaches us what it means to truly love God and one another. It’s not easy—it’s challenging, but we must not give into the lie of Satan that true love can exist without the cross. After all, we find the perfect example of love every time we glance upon a Crucifix.

God Bless,
-Fr. Jason Signalness