Homily for 24th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 13, 2015
The Cross
Have you
ever had to take unpleasant medicine? For most of my childhood I was too scared
to swallow pills whole, so I would try to find creative ways to take medicine,
which usually involved grinding up the pills and putting them into Tang or
orange juice. That did very little to take away the absolutely disgusting taste
of powdered Asprin!
Sometimes
it is necessary to do unpleasant things for our own benefit. Going to the
dentist, studying for tests, working out, doing our taxes – these things are
not fun, but in the long run they bring us greater peace and blessings.
We just
heard Jesus emphasize that His suffering and death on the Cross was necessary.
But why? Why was it necessary for the Majestic King of Kings to die this
horrific death on the Cross? Couldn’t He have redeemed us in some other way?
After all, I believe it was St. Alphonsus Liguori who said, “A single drop of
Jesus’ Blood could redeem a thousand worlds more sinful than ours.” Why did He
have to undergo all of the tortures of His passion? I believe that there are
three reasons.
First,
Jesus wanted to demonstrate the full ugliness and horror of sin. If God is the
source of beauty and life, then to willingly separate ourselves from God means
that we are choosing ugliness and death over life. We know this to be true –
why is it that Mother Teresa, a wrinkled old nun, radiated such beauty and
vitality? Because she was totally united to God, the Source of beauty and life.
So, on the Cross, Jesus wanted to give us a visual experience of the true consequences
of sin. His scourged body, with blood dripping down from His open wounds, hands
and feet driven through with a nail reminded us of the hideous consequences of
sin: death.
Second,
because Love gives, and perfect Love gives all. We see this in a healthy
marriage – because a husband and wife love each other, they share the same bank
account, they share the same bedroom, they want to give their lives to each
other. Since God is love, and His love is not limited, He wanted to give
everything to us. And what could be more of a gift than His very life, laid
down on the Cross? As Jesus said, “No man has greater love than to lay down his
life for his friend.” Jesus wanted to show us that His love was boundless, so
He gave all that He could give!
Third,
on the Cross Jesus wanted to show us that He enters into the depth of human
suffering to be with us. Now, no one can say to God, “You don’t know what
suffering is like!” He DOES know what suffering is like, because He willingly
entered into it. Not only was He physically tortured on the Cross, suffering
more physical anguish than any human being in history, but He also suffered
mental anguish – He experienced all of the guilt and shame of centuries of
human sin; He experienced the fearful, soul-wracking anxiety of knowing
everything that was going to happen to Him; He acutely felt separated from the
Father, as He cried out, My God, My God,
Why have You abandoned Me?
He knows
the depth of human pain because He entered into it, and paradoxically, He transformed
it. It was through the Cross that He rose again to a new and more abundant life
– as Pope Benedict XVI said, Jesus’ Resurrected body was not just like His
first body, but He had entered into a new plane of existence. The Cross now for
us the path to life. At the end of today’s Gospel He lays before us the paradox
of Christianity – it’s by embracing the Cross that we find joy; it’s by laying
down our life that we find it again.
What
does this look like practically? For an example, when we’re stuck in traffic, the
world tells us to just get angry, drive aggressively, cut people off, and
mutter curse words about the other drivers. To embrace the Cross is to realize
that here is an opportunity to spend a few extra moments in prayer, to grow in
patience, or to offer this small suffering up by uniting it, in our hearts, to
Christ’s suffering on the Cross.
Or, for
another example, if we are blessed to have extra money, the world tells us to
spend it on luxuries, and to always strive for more. To embrace the Cross is to
realize that we have been given this money to do good for others, and we ought to
be grateful to God for what He has given us.
Or, for
a final example, you come home from work and you’re tired, but your kids need
help with their homework and your spouse forgot to take out the trash again and
there’s a message on the answering machine from that cousin who needs to talk –
again. The world tells us, you don’t deserve this. Get angry, or just walk out.
But to embrace the Cross is to choose charity; to choose to die to yourself and
engage your kids, to sacrifice for your spouse, to listen to that difficult
cousin. Not easy – but embracing the Cross forms us to become saints.
Embracing
the cross is a paradox (a paradox is something that seems, at first glance, to
be a contradiction, but is actually true). Embrace the Cross? Embrace an
instrument of torture? Find life by dying to ourselves, by putting to death our
sin, our unhealthy desires, our worldliness? Much of Christianity is absurd to
those who, as Jesus put it, “are thinking not as God thinks, but as human
beings do.” Fasting, for example – to a worldly person, it makes no sense to
give up dessert. But for a spiritual person, fasting and making small
sacrifices helps us grow in discipline and dependence on God. Or prayer – for a
worldly person, prayer is a waste of time. But for a spiritual person it is
intimacy with God. Our faith itself is absurd to those who do not believe!
Peter himself had a hard time
accepting this teaching about embracing the Cross – he tried to rebuke Jesus
about it. Peter was “thinking as the world thinks” – focusing on earthly
pleasures, comfort, an easy life. But Peter did eventually embrace the Cross –
in fact, St. Peter died by being crucified upside-down in Rome under the Roman
Emperor Nero in 64AD. He was crucified upside-down because he told his
executioners that he was not worthy to die in the same manner as the Lord. And
because he was willing to embrace the Cross, it became the gateway to eternal
life.
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