by Fr. Ed Liptak, SDB
It is hard to miss the theme of this 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, A. After the first reading from Jeremiah, we will repeat it often, “O Lord my God, my soul is thirsting for You.” This thirst or longing for God, is much the same as to say “I don’t want to go to hell forever. No! I choose eternal joy in heaven.” Jeremiah must have intended that when he accepted being a prophet. But when we meet him today, he is lamenting that his decision has brought him only mockery and pain. “You, [God], tricked me!”
Not only Jeremiah, but we too want to accept God’s invitation to salvation. However, the way can be demanding. Often our ‘body’ and its ease lie contrary to God’s Way. St. Paul’s scriptural lesson does not offer much consolation. [Do you want to know] “what is the will of God, what is good, pleasing and perfect?” Then, says Paul, be ready to conquer those threats of the body and offer your effort as a sacrifice to God, and he will keep you in the Way. He will keep the door to heaven open for you. Good Christians are those who can meet a challenge. We are not weaklings.
Jesus, in the Gospel, does not relent in telling the truth about his or our journey. He is God’s eternal Truth. Immediately after Peter proclaimed to great praise from Jesus, that God himself had placed Peter’s description of Jesus on his lips, that he was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus began to reveal what would happen to him in Jerusalem, that he was obliged to go, and that he would suffer greatly from the religious leaders, be killed but rise from the dead. Peter seemed to latch onto the suffering part, and by insisting that he and the apostles would never let that happen, he earned another rebuke from Jesus, “Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Then Jesus turned to the apostles as he turned to us and told us all that to follow him, we too would have to take up our cross of self-sacrifice. That was the true way to follow him. To follow him where? To the endless comfort of heaven. Jesus did say that after suffering he would rise again, and Peter seemed to have missed that. Heaven? Only with willing faith and acceptance of trials on the way. Yes, Lord!