Message from Father Jay – August 28, 2020

Memorial of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

God, in His mercy, from time-to-time gives us a much-needed wake-up call lest we become either complacent or overly confident in our faith. The first part of our Gospel for this weekend (Mt. 16:21-27) has had that effect on me, so I would like to share this little reflection with you all.

First of all, let’s recall the setting of this encounter between the Lord and Peter. It follows immediately after last week’s Gospel, in which Peter gives his great confession that he believes Jesus is “…the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Immediately, then, Jesus begins to show the disciples how He must go to Jerusalem where he will “…suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” In a rather abrupt reversal, instead of confessing that Jesus is the Messiah, Peter takes Him aside and begins to rebuke Him (picture THAT, if you will!) for what He is trying to teach them. In one of the very few cases in which Jesus showed anger, He turned to Peter and said:

“Get behind me, Satan!
"You are an obstacle to me.
"You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Please, just take each of those three sentences separately and reflect on what Jesus was trying to get across to Peter and to us as well. Jesus was chiding Peter because after all this time of being in such close relationship with Jesus, Peter still didn’t get what it means to fully be a disciple. Peter, like all of us, loved to think of all the happy things that come our way in our relationship with Christ. We love the gentle parts of the Gospel, we love the fellowship into which we have been brought, we love the sacred mystery that envelopes us whenever we participate in any of the Sacraments, we love the hope of the promises that have been made to us in our covenant with Heaven.

Enjoying all these precious things, however, isn’t the fullness of discipleship. With discipleship comes suffering, being misunderstood, learning self-denial, making difficult decisions, and oftentimes having to learn the painful lessons of submitting our own will to the will of the One who has called us to that covenant. These are the lessons Jesus is trying to get across to Peter, lessons that He had to teach with fervent passion in order that they would sink into the very depths of Peter’s heart.

Jesus continues His teaching by speaking of the need for the one who would be a disciple to deny himself, take up his cross and follow Him. There’s nothing easy in any of that, is there? It’s in the most difficult times when our discipleship is truly put to the test, and those early disciples were about to have their relationship with Jesus put to the most extreme test. We know from Scripture that there were many who had begun a journey with Jesus, but when He began to teach them about the cost of discipleship, we read, “As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (John 6:66). When discipleship became too difficult, many were no longer willing to pay the cost.

Why is all of this so serious and important for us today? You cannot turn your television on anymore without hearing, “In these difficult times …” or “In these uncertain times,” and it is in these stressful times that we could easily become lax in our relationship with the Lord or even just say it’s not worth it anymore. Jesus isn’t going to change the terms of our covenant just to make things easier. In fact, in that portion from John that I mentioned above, Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked them, “Do you also want to leave?” He gave them a choice, and His unspoken words seem to be saying, “You can go back if you wish, but I am going forward into the deeper will of my Father.” That was the wake-up call I needed to hear, and it was so sobering that I needed to share it with all of you. The question, therefore: Am I still willing to pay the cost of my discipleship? It has been said that faith can only grow in troubled times, and if we are doing all we can to avoid the testing of our faith, then I fear we’re not going to grow in that faith. Difficult times? Yes, they are. Troubled times? Certainly. Stressful times too? Absolutely. However, these can also be times of great privilege as they reveal to us the depths of our need for His love and care, holding and protecting us in times of difficulty. These can most assuredly be days of profound blessing for us as we faithfully use them to recommit ourselves to our covenant with our Heavenly Father.

I long for the day when we can once again share face-to-face fellowship, but until then, I would like to share just two more little portions of scripture which I hope will strengthen you and increase your joy. Ephesians 6:10:

“Finally, … be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

And finally, from Psalm 61:2 (KJV):

“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

May God’s deepest peace reign in your hearts,

Fr. Jay