Good morning good people,
It is 12th September 2021.
We celebrate the Twenty Fourth Sunday of the ordinary time.
We reflect on Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; and the Gospel of Mark 8:27-35.
Welcome again to be a true disciple of the Lord. We all are good, generous, and hard-working people.
To be a true disciple one needs to have met the Master, be captivated by His teaching and life, mastering the values of Him, and constantly magnifying the goodness of the Master by reaching out to the people.
God permits suffering in our life so that we may think of those in suffering and run to help them in the way we can. All we can is to accompany the broken, the hungry, the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable.
An Indian girl named Anusha was a close observer of the missionary priest of her parish in the town she lived. She used to watch him at his prayers in the church, listened closely to his teaching and preaching, and witnessed him as he went about visiting the sick, consoling the sorrow, protecting the widows and orphans in loneliness, pain, and poverty. She used to admire the priest for his loving encouragement and guidance with a kind words, a face full of smile, and heart full of affection and love. During her school holidays, she visited her friend nearby village where they both attended the Catechism lesson after Sunday Mass. The sister who taught them that day posed the question by explaining about a man who kind was, helping the sick, healing the sick, protecting the vulnerable with teachings that lead to God. She asked Anusha to find out who was that man? Without a second thought and hesitation, she said the name of the missionary priest from her town.
God is not impressed for having placed our trust in Him, but He is delighted to see us doing things after believing in God. All of us can lose sight of the direction when we are young, energetic, and enigmatic. It is the Church that offers the possibility of strengthening the fabrics of our faith in God.
Ajay was a young boy who lost his way home and began perplexing, roaming everywhere to find the way back home. Got tired and exhausted he sat and started sobbing about his inability to reach home. At the time, a policeman found him seated alone and helped to take him around to find the place, driving all over the city and streets of the city so that he could recall the familiar places and remember the way home. As soon as he spotted the Church, in excitement, he shouted saying that it was his church, and he could find the way home back. The officer who listened to his excitement remarked, “You’re not the only one, young man,” said the officer.
we have the third hymn about the Suffering servant of Yahweh in the book of Isaiah. To be a true disciple is to rely on God for everything. When we have such firm faith in God, our actions and thoughts remind others that we are trustworthy. In the first sentence of the first reading, we hear today, the words of the suffering servant: ” The Lord God helps me.” These words come twice to our attention.
James today In the Second Reading, St. James speaks about a true disciple is the one who believes firmly and acts fairly. Our faith cannot be for the display and popularity, but it is for the relationship with God and with one another. Our erudition in the Word of God does not make us a true and authentic disciple of Christ. Faith without deeds is dead and it does not benefit anyone. But our good works, charitable actions, and timely human help to the others in need that attract God and benefited from others. Someone said that a true disciple is one who makes more disciples for Christ by his or her life.
In the Gospel, Jesus expresses that a true disciple is not ashamed of his or her cross. It is not merely getting the answer of what people think satisfied Jesus but our personal and intimate answer.
“But you, who do you say I am?” presses Jesus. Peter spoke on behalf of the disciples saying that He is the Christ, which means the Messiah, the long-awaited liberator king of Israel, and in Greek Christos, means the ‘anointed One’. In the Gospel, Mark stresses the humanity of Jesus. But Jesus was so strong coming on Peter for not ready to believe a suffering servant of God. a true disciple not only believes but acts in the name of the Lord and for the Lord. Knowing, confessing, and believing are important but what is much more important is to live like Him. What are we doing in our life that shows that we are the followers of Jesus?
For Jesus, “no cross, no crown.” Unless we accept the cross, pain, suffering and loss in our life, we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. We wish to move away from the Lord when the waves of vexing and turbulences of troubles shake us to the core. That is why the words of John the Baptist holds good, “are you He who is to come or should we look for another” (Mt 11:3; Lk 7:19).
Loving and believing in the Lord empowers us to overlook and less reacting to the failures and faults of others.
On their wedding anniversary, a couple exchanged a new diary wished to write the shortcomings of the other spouse and read and rectify their mistakes in the following year. A year rolled by, and they exchanged the diary that was written by them. They started reading. The husband was in tears as he opened every page because it was full of accusations, fault-finding, disappointments, and mistakes he has committed over the year. While the wife was in tears as she was surprised to see nothing written in the entire diary except the last past like this: “Your love, dedication and sacrifices are above every shortcoming, and I couldn’t find anything that I could write in this diary.” True love rises above the dirt of the surface but always dives into the deep to look for pearls and perks in the person. Finding perky in the person we love not getting murky in everything we see. It might be easy for all of us to say what we see about them other than what we truly feel about them. We love hearing people than listening to their heartbeat and the smell of humanity.
St. Peter, as a disciple, struggle to figure out who Jesus was because he closed his mind that the Anointed One cannot go through humiliation, suffering and carrying the cross. It is in the light of the resurrection of the Lord, the disciples were able to comprehend the meaning of brokenness and failure.
Discipleship comes with the cost of inconveniences and interventions. Being a suffering servant for God and for the Church is the vocation and a special call we all need to embrace to demonstrate our authenticity in believing Christ. May you have a good day. God bless you abundantly.