HOMILY WEEK 06 04 – Year II
Faith in a Revolutionary Messiah:
Optional Memorial of the Seven Founders of the Servite Order
(James 2:1-9; Ps 34; Mark 8:27-33)
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Every year, it seems, the perennial question about the identity of Jesus, “Who do people say I am?” surfaces in magazines, on talk shows, etc. How interesting that for over two thousand years, Jesus manages to fascinate people around the world, even those who don’t really believe in him.
For those who are fortunate to believe in him, the readings today, in Jesus’ response to Peter, underline the fact that he is a revolutionary Messiah calling us to genuine love and redemptive suffering.
Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus poses the question about his identity, is where the River Jordan finds its source. It was also a cultural, religious, political and economic cross-roads at that time. Niches to many gods, dancing goats and the grotto of the god Pan are still evident today.
Here, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
No other religious figure or founder would ask such a question. This is the primordial and peculiar question of the Christian faith. It has to do with him and who he is.
The first group that “responds” is the general public, giving a range of opinion—and all of it wrong. And if we were to take a public opinion poll today, we would hear “teacher, prophet, guru, madman . . .” Finally, to the question “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter proclaims, “You are the Messiah.” In Matthew’s version of the scene, Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This is the mystical faith that stands at the heart of Christianity. To hold this Petrine faith is to be a Christian; to deny it is to not be a Christian.
Mark immediately introduces the theme of the “Messianic Secret.” Once Peter speaks the truth about his identity, Jesus tells his disciples “not to tell anyone about him.” That is because who he is as Messiah is so unusual, so different from the Jewish expectations of the Messiah, so revolutionary, that the general population would not be able to handle it, to comprehend or believe in it, until God’s plan would be more fully revealed in the resurrection.
Jesus begins to unfold that plan for the disciples through the prediction of his passion. He would be a God who suffers, a crucified Messiah. That is a stumbling block for the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks, as St. Paul would later proclaim (1 Cor 1:23). Professor Casis, an expert on Islam, gave a talk to the western bishops years ago. He speaks Arabic, knows the Quran and loves the Muslim people. When asked why he did not become Muslim, he gave two reasons: One, Islam has no sense of symbolism. Their art is all geometric forms, which helps explain why they so quickly see satire as blasphemy. The second is because they have absolutely no concept of a God who suffers, or could ever have a son. For them, that is also blasphemy.
All this underlines the messianic secret – how difficult it is for many to believe in a revolutionary suffering Messiah, a suffering which his disciples are invited to accept as part of following him. The necessity of suffering is not simply a pious desire to imitate Jesus; much of what is truly worthwhile can be accomplished only by those who are willing to trust Jesus’ word that suffering belongs to God’s plan, something difficult to achieve in a “Pain-killer” culture.
We are challenged to think as Jesus does. God does not delight in suffering – the disciples were sent to preach and to heal, but suffering would come to them as a matter of course. The danger is to think suffering is always undesirable, and that if we pray enough, God will remove all suffering from our lives and fix all our problems. Prayer is important in healing, but prayer at its deepest is an opening up of ourselves to what God wills, not an exercise in forcing God to do our will.
The Jewish Christian martyr Simone Weil put it this way: “The extraordinary greatness of Christianity is not that it provides us with medicine against suffering, but that it gives perspective to our suffering.” Sadly, our society today has lost all sense of any meaning in suffering, and is forced to try to avoid or eliminate it at all costs, leading to both physician-assisted suicide and an epidemic of opioid addiction, as people try to medicate their pain instead of transforming it into faith-filled purpose.
Along that line, Archbishop Emeritus Adam Exner shares this perspective: We may not be martyrs in a physical sense, but we are all called to a martyrdom in slow motion. As Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan S.J. once quipped, “If we are thinking of following Jesus, we better consider first how good we look on wood!”
Georgina Bouvier in Île-à-la Crosse was a good example for us. She was virtually homebound, looking after a paraplegic child who responded only to her touch, yet she did that faithfully, day in and day out, without any word of complaint, but with gratitude, compassion, caring and unconditional love for her son. After he died she went to volunteer in the local hospital, and found meaning and joy in continuing to give her life away.
Servite founders
Today the church invites us to honor the seven holy founders of the Servite Order, who truly lived the message of today’s readings. One of the earliest orders of mendicants – religious communities who rely solely on charity for support – the Order of Servites was founded in 1240. Inspired by visions of Our Lady, they decided to dedicate themselves to lives of prayer and service. In time, they attracted so many visitors that they decided to withdraw to a deserted mountain, where they built a church and hermitage, living a life of extreme austerity. Of the seven, only the lay brother, who lived to be 110, saw the order fully recognized in 1304.
We pray this Eucharist will strengthen our faith in Jesus as the Messiah, help us find meaning in our own suffering, and empower us to love others as Jesus did, without counting the cost
