Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows
Scripture:
Isaiah 50:4c-9a
James 2:14-18
Mark 8:27-35
Reflection:
In our Gospel reading for this Sunday (Mark 8:27-35), Jesus asks His disciples what the people are saying about Him: “Who do people say that I am?” When the disciples answer that the people consider Him as one of the prophets, Jesus wants to know what they think. And Peter replies, “You are the Christ.”
And then Jesus tells them something very important. He tells them what being “the Christ,” the Messiah, really means: “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.”
But Peter will have none of it, and rebukes Jesus. So, Jesus has to rebuke Peter in the sight of the others, because they all need to hear His answer: “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
And then, Jesus goes even further, to teach the crowd along with His disciples: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”
As I reflected on all these movements within our Gospel reading, what came to me was the centrality of the Cross. If we want to understand more fully who Jesus is, and how much we are loved by Him, we need to look at the Cross. If we want to understand how to respond to His love, and follow Him in our lives, we need to look at the Cross.
It is the Cross that guides us in how to obey the commandment to love. It is the Cross that leads us in doing the works that demonstrate our faith (See our second reading: James 2:14-18). It is by taking up our crosses and giving of ourselves that we witness to our hope in the Resurrection.
It is through the Cross, not the use of force or violence or any attempt to vanquish our enemies, or display what we see as our moral superiority, that we testify to the power and love of God in Jesus Christ!
May we not run away from the Cross, but embrace it, so that we may embrace Jesus. It doesn’t make sense to the world, but it is the Cross of Christ that will lead us to work for justice and real peace. It is the Cross of Christ that will lead us to serenity and even joy.
May the Passion of Jesus Christ be always in our hearts!
Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior of the Passionist Community in Birmingham, Alabama.