Things escalate quite quickly in this conversation between Jesus and Peter. Last week, Peter confidently proclaims Jesus as the “Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” favouring him as the rock on which Christ will build his church. Then after his well-intended remonstrations with Jesus for the heavens to preserve him, Peter is told “get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path”.
Peter, the rock of the church, now becomes the stumbling rock. He doesn’t quite grasp that Jesus (Messiah or Christ) needed to suffer and take up his cross. However, time and time again, Jesus in his radical ways turns views upside down and Peter is challenged that Christ’s future glory cannot happen without the cross.
Simultaneously, Christ is inviting Peter to change their relationship from friendship to discipleship. The same goes for each Christian too. All of us are invited in today’s Gospel to Christian discipleship, to “take up his cross and follow me”. And like Peter we can also be like stumbling stones, unwilling to take up this call of discipleship with Christ.
Many followers of Christ are attracted to his offer of happiness, eternal life, beatitude and resurrection. But as Christians do we accept only those that appeal to us and make us comfortable, or do we accept the whole of Jesus’ revelation? Once we hear the radical demands of the Gospel, we can start to flinch, softly echoing the sentiments of St Augustine, “make me chaste, but not yet”. Christian discipleship calls for transformation, inviting us to seek forgiveness and forgive others boundless times, to help the poor, to tell the truth even when it is difficult, and to give way to Jesus in all areas of our life. Yet, for whatever reason we may sometimes think to ourselves “not just yet”. Overcoming this reluctance to enter into discipleship requires us to put on the mind of Christ, letting our behaviour change according to what God wants and that includes taking up our cross.
Taking up our cross means there will be some kind of suffering involved. But we do not need to go out and seek suffering; that seems more like self-infliction or self-punishment. Over the course of our lives, whether it is illness, failure, the loss of people, or other circumstances; God will put us in situations where we think the cross might be too heavy to bear. But one thing is also certain in the Christian life, we do not carry our crosses alone. Our Lord is always near, helping us to carry our cross and to redeem our suffering.
The glory of Christ’s resurrection could not have been achieved without the agony of His cross. We receive the fruits of His cross when we take up our own and allow it to increase our capacity to love. Let us embrace our cross and continue to follow Him.
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Laura Facci says:
Thank you Father Ian for a wonderful homily.