HOMILY WEEK 06 05 – Year II
Taking up Our Cross: Radical Discipleship and Redemptive Suffering
(James 2:14-24, 46; Ps 112; Mk 8:34-9:1)
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A man, tired of the cross he was given to carry, went into a cross shop to get another one. All the ones he tried were either too heavy or too light, too rough or slippery, too long or short until he picked one up that fit him perfectly. When he went to purchase it, the clerk informed him that was the one he came in with!
Today’s readings impart a clear message to us – we are to express our faith through good works, by taking up our crosses and carrying them joyfully into radical discipleship and redemptive suffering.
“Faith without works is dead.” Unfortunately, ever since the time of the Reformation, believers have been divided by this verse, by this dilemma of faith and works. Are we really justified by faith alone? Or does faith need to manifest itself in actions.
The more Protestant view is that we are saved by faith alone, while a more Catholic perspective is that of St. James: faith without works is dead. We are to express our faith through good works. The late Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan had a cryptic way of putting it: God is not really in our heads or our hearts, but rather where our bum is at! Good works for Berrigan involves getting off our but and picking up a cross. Faith must be expressed in action, or it is ineffectual and perhaps not really faith at all.
For Bishop Robert Barron, in today’s Gospel Jesus lays down the conditions of discipleship. A few verses before our reading Jesus predicted his Passion for the first time. He will sacrifice himself in love for the other – and in this, he will come to deeper life and become a source of life to others. Ronald Knox talked about the sign of the cross this way: the first two gestures form the letter “I,” and the next two cross it out. That’s what the cross of Jesus meant and means.
In this gospel passage, Jesus gathered the crowd with his disciples and pronounced the formula for following him. We ought to be listening too with great attention: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” The path of discipleship is the path of self-sacrificing love, and that means the path of suffering.
Then the great paradox: “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.” We need to put that over our door, on the refrigerator, on our screensaver. There is no better one-line guide to the happy life.
A cross is any inconvenience or sacrifice we don’t like to make, that we would rather not do. When our mother was in palliative care in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease, she became my cross. After she no longer recognized me and stopped communicating, I would visit her at meal times and feed her, as that was the only way I could elicit a response from her. Reflecting on that experience, I realized I needed that cross – to slow me down, to knock me off the expressway of my own agenda, and above all to help me realize the precious worth of my mother’s life, even if she could no longer do anything for anyone, and had very little worth in the eyes of the world.
In fact, that world today very easily have suggested eliminating her through MAID (medical assistance in dying) which is actually physician assisted suicide bordering in some cases on murder. And so, we find funds for that instead of providing the very best palliative care we can for our elders that will reduce their suffering and give meaning and purpose to it.
Taking up our cross and following Jesus takes us into radical discipleship and redemptive suffering. Jesus accepted his suffering, his passion and death, not by fighting, fleeing or freezing (the options many choose), but rather, by the faith option of forgiveness – “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
Jesus is our model. If we can accept some suffering and inconvenience in our lives, take up our cross the way Jesus did, without resentment or bitterness, then we are already living in the kingdom of heaven, which for St. Paul in Romans 14:17, is the “peace, joy and justice of the Holy Spirit.” The Shroud of Turin portrays Jesus’ face as totally at peace, in spite of the violence of his death. He trusted in the Father’s love for him, and knew he was doing the Father’s will – revealing to a very wounded and doubting world, the unfathomable depth of the Father’s love for humanity.
That peace and serenity, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit and not a passing feeling, can be ours if our faith is grounded in the love of God for us in Jesus Christ, regardless of what is going on around us in our lives. It is actually living within the kingdom of God, here and now.
The Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet awaiting us. It makes present the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for us; how he expressed his faith and trust in the Father’s love for him, through the selfless action of freely giving up his life for us.
May our celebration today empower us to express our faith through good works, by taking up our cross and following Jesus into radical discipleship and redemptive suffering.
