HOMILY SUNDAY 05 – B
Radical Discipleship – Secret of the Kingdom
(Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39)
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Did you know there is a secret to the kingdom of God?
The message from today’s readings and a legal decision in Canada, is that while we can and should pray and hope for healing, we should also be prepared to joyfully accept suffering without resentment.
There is a tension in the readings between the healing ministry of Jesus in the Gospel, and the suffering of Job in the first reading. That tension relates to the decision of the Supreme Court to grant the right to doctor-assisted suicide to all Canadians.
That decision, while applauded by some, reveals two basic flaws: a lack of political will for better universal palliative care programs in our country, and a lack of understanding of the nature and importance of suffering.
With regard to the first flaw, it is ironic that now, because of a judgment that should have been up to parliament and not the Supreme Court, we will provide doctor-assisted suicide to all before we have an adequate universal palliative care plan available to all. Our focus and our funding should be going to improving palliative care and not funding death by choice.
With regard to the second flaw, the lack of understanding of the mystery of suffering, we need to look at the three stages of discipleship as taught by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, a well-known theologian, spiritual writer and former President of Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
Rolheiser teaches that the first twelve years of our lives are simply growing up. However, from puberty on to about the age of thirty, we enter into the stage of essential discipleship. This is when we ask basic questions such as what will our career be? What will our vocation be? Will we get married? Where will we live? These are the questions we ask as we seek to establish our place in society and the world.
The next stage happens after we have settled down, have a career and a home, and are perhaps raising a family. This is the stage of generative discipleship, during which we use our gifts and talents to make the world a better place. We are giving our lives away.
The last stage is that of radical discipleship, the one that our society today does not understand. This stage comes to us through illness, old age or some other factor that we cannot control. In this stage, we can’t do anything – everything is done to us. This is the stage when we give our deaths away.
Our best model for this stage is Jesus himself. After three and a half years of generative ministry of healing and teaching, as in the Gospel today, Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. From that moment to his death on the Cross, Jesus didn’t do anything – everything was done to him. He was mocked, denied, betrayed, abandoned, tortured and finally crucified. That was what we call his passion. The word passio means “being done unto.”
What is important here is the way Jesus underwent his suffering – without resentment or bitterness. There was only forgiveness and unconditional love. That is the secret of the kingdom – to undergo suffering without resentment. Jesus gave not only his life, but also his death away as an optimal blessing for the world. When Jesus hung on the cross, blood and water flowed from his side. This means more than baptism and Eucharist. It is the eternal life that Jesus is giving to us, flowing from his radical discipleship.
Suffering can make us bitter, or better. Suffering makes us deeper; it forms our character. When life is too easy, we remain shallow. When suffering comes our way, we can opt out and take the way of doctor-assisted suicide, or we can act with faith and accept suffering as Jesus did. When we link our suffering to his, it becomes redemptive. Blood and water should flow from our casket
Former Oblate Eddie Hecker, who displayed the replica of the shroud of Turin in Los Angeles, said that a funeral director there told him he had done autopsies on hundreds of people who died violent deaths, and the violence of their deaths was written on the faces of every one of them. The man on the shroud, however, obviously died a violent death, but his face is at peace. Jesus, on the Cross, was at peace because he knew he was doing the Father’s will. When we act like God, we get to feel like God. Jesus will give us the strength to suffer as he did, to accept radical discipleship, with meaningfulness and serenity.
My late Auntie Therese Hebert was an inspiring example of a radical discipleship. Though at age 92, she could barely see, walk, hear or do anything, and longed to be with her husband Louis who had died earlier, she was a joy to visit because of her patient serenity, and the knowledge that she was praying for all of us daily.
The Gospel adds the reason Jesus was able to suffer because he was rooted in his loving relationship with the Father. He used to get up before dark, go out to a deserted place and there he prayed. Like Jesus, and even more than Jesus, we need to commune with God to gain the strength to understand and accept redemptive suffering, radical discipleship, in our lives.
Richard Rohr, noted spiritual writer and founder of the Centre for Contemplation and Action in New Mexico, adds these thoughts in his book, Breathing Under Water: “Only people who have suffered in some way can save another, exactly as the Twelve Step Program discovered. Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure.”
The Eucharist is our greatest prayer, and an experience of healing in itself. Washed clean by God’s word and strengthened by the Body and Blood of Jesus, we are empowered to go out and share with others who suffer this message of radical discipleship and redemptive suffering.
So, in the end, let us continue to pray for and hope for healing, but also be ready to accept suffering without resentment in our lives, and live to the full our call to radical discipleship.
