Homily: Monday, 19th Week of Ordinary Time - Year 2

Readings: Ez 1:2-5,24-28 • Ps 148 • Mt 17:22-27
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Jesus spent a lot of time shaping His disciples' hearts, opening their eyes to the Paschal mystery that ultimately must come. He did this first through the example of His own life, and then gradually in their lives. In our passage from Matthew, we see this shaping taking place.'

For some time, now, Jesus' allusions to His death and Resurrection had gained steady momentum. In the two chapters preceding today's reading, He  revealed to them the necessity of His suffering, death and resurrection. But today Jesus tells the disciples openly that, 

"The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day" [Mt 17:22-23].

Although still unable to accept this, the disciples seem to have made some progress.

Remember how Peter reacted almost violently when the Lord first announced His passion? Compare that with their reaction now. They no longer dare argue with Jesus. Instead they're "overwhelmed with grief" [Mt 17:23] 

Jesus' words were plain, their meaning clear. The Apostles certainly don't understand the "why" of it all, but they've begun to accept its inevitability.

Jesus Reveals the Cross

Perhaps that's one of the reasons Jesus often calls Himself the Son of Man. That the Son of Man, the flower of humanity, will be betrayed by men underscores humanity's tragic self-deceit. By betraying God, by killing His Son, Who is also the Son of Man, we actually betray and kill ourselves.

Our loving God doesn't come to us as an all-knowing, omnipotent creator...No, He comes as one of us, as our loving brother.

Years ago, an agnostic friend said to me, "I could never be a Christian. Your idea of God is absolutely crazy...that the God who created the universe would come to this insignificant little planet as a man, and then let us kill Him. That's an insane God."

Yes, indeed, for many men, such love is insane. It's insane to them because they could never love so much. They actually despise how God approaches us in Jesus. They hate it for the same reason Cain despised and killed his brother, Abel.

The motive is clear: Jesus presents us with the reality of our better selves. He shows us how we could be, and we feel in our flesh the sharp edge of judgment and inferiority. And this presents us with two choices:

We can listen to Him and do the Father's will. We can change and become conformed to Jesus' beauty and goodness...

Or we can try to damage that beauty, destroy that goodness, in a feeble attempt to suppress its judgment of our sinfulness.

But Jesus' divine strategy overcomes our foolishness and our sin. He allows Himself to fall into the abuse and violence of men's hands so that, when they wound Him, they will be covered by the tide of His Precious Blood flowing from Calvary, from this very altar and thousands like it. For His blood has the power of absorbing into its love, and therefore neutralizing, the worst hatred of which we are capable.

Victor Frankl, the Austrian Jewish psychotherapist who spent much of World War II as a prisoner in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, wrote a remarkable book of his experiences called, Man's Search for Meaning. In it he describes how in the midst of unbelievable brutality and the most degrading conditions he found so many examples of remarkable faith and unselfish love. Again and again, Frankl encountered people who had achieved victory over the sinfulness that surrounded them. And out of this experience of abject suffering Frankl had a revelation.

He wrote, "Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, 'The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.'"

And yet so many of us, we who have never known such suffering, never come face to face with the kind of evil Frankl encountered, the kind that Jesus encountered on that first Good Friday...most of us in our sufferings only argue and fight with God.

The Apostles, with the help of the Holy Spirit, eventually came to understand what Jesus meant when He connected the necessity of His suffering with the cross His followers must take up daily.

Let's learn from them and today turn to the Holy Spirit. Invite Him into our hearts, to shape us, to give us the joy that only the love of God can bring.

For the Spirit waits patiently, always listening for our call, always responding to our prayer.