Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Ezekiel 34:11–12, 15–17
1 Corinthians 15:20–26, 28
Matthew 25:31–46

In Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti, there is a subtitle for several paragraphs that reads “beginning with the least.” At first it may not sound like much, but given the context of the parable we just heard, it is everything. Where the parable ends with recognition of the “least,” Francis says we must begin. The people behind the faces of the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned are the people that Jesus identifies with. You and I can easily extend that list today. If we are to begin to look for the face of Jesus, then we must begin with them.

Pope Francis often speaks of a ‘culture of encounter’ and how essential this is if humanity is to have a future worthy of it. And is that not what we find in the parable today? We hear of righteous men and women who engaged in an encounter with what we might not at first glance even call culture. But in fact, those who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, a foreigner and a prisoner are part even of our culture. And to leave them out, would mean that we have a lopsided view of our culture. The demand on us Christians to include them is high. Why? Because if we stand in the world of the parable, then we find that such folks are part of Christ’s Body as much as you and I. To refuse to recognize the poor and vulnerable would dehumanize them even more and leave us as the judge taking the place of the Son of Man. If we fail to engage in encounter with them as Christians, we are in fact refusing to gaze upon Christ himself. And the end result of that stance towards encounter is that we find ourselves cut off from belonging to Christ as much as the devil. But this would be our doing.

The scene today is a final encounter of the Shepherd King with his flock of sheep and herd of goats. In this encounter he is looking for those who belong to his Kingdom. Those who belong, it seems, are not those who cry out “Lord, Lord,” holding up placards at rallies to honor him. Jesus has made it clear that his honor guard does not lie with those chanting his name. Calling out, “Lord, Lord,” does not seem to be the entrance ticket into the Kingdom. We hear that in the Sermon on the Mount; we heard it a few weeks ago in another end time parable when five women were foolish enough not to bring oil. When they finally got some found themselves outside the wedding feast. What counts for this King is where you recognized him out there in his country. Did you and I recognize him among the broken, among the needy, among the neglected and down trodden? Did we recognize him in suffering humanity? It is among these that his royal image appears.

The crown on our King his is dignity and worth seen in the faces of those from humanity might just walk away. Those who recognize this face and take time to encounter it, meet with it and bring forth the dignity in these faces, these are the Kingdom people. They know who else belongs to the Kingdom and they are willing to encounter them and call forth their own royal dignity.

The surprise in today’s parable is that those who encountered the sick, the foreigner, the hungry and so forth and responded to them with dignity did not even know that their King was there. They engaged in an encounter with broken humanity and offered something of their own humanity in return. They were simply themselves. They were grounded in the culture of the Kingdom so well that acting as a citizen of the Kingdom flowed from their hearts without question. They were true children of the Father who makes the rain fall on good and bad alike. They were children of the Father for whom mercy is the first commandment. Their right hand did not know what their left hand was doing. They were simply children of their Father in heaven encountering other children of the same Father. So of course, they were also serving the Father’s Son, the Son of Man, The Son of humanity.

For doing what their humanity called for, namely, encountering the weak, suffering and forgotten, they were being true to humanity. They were engaging their own humanity in such a way that it was generating more humanity as it were. It is no real surprise then that they enter a kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. They have been in touch with true humanity as it was from the foundation of the world. They did not reject part of humanity because it was experiencing a lack, because it was least. No, they embraced it as part of themselves and cared for it.

Christ is the King who has a face in all that is human, even the least of humanity. It is his resurrection that has allowed him to touch all humanity. He is the new Adam of which Paul speaks, the new humanity, risen from the grave. His risen self is universal; it is no longer limited or time bound. He is the first fruits of a new humanity working now to transform all that is human. All now belong to him; the least are his brothers and sisters, he says. He identifies not only with my personal brokenness, my isolation, my abuse. He identifies with all of humanity’s woundedness.

Our King’s kingdom includes all the nations, all the richness of cultures and diversity. He, the risen Lord, holds it together. We who believe in this Kingdom and are graced with living in it are graced also with the mission to encounter in his name all who live in it, the least and the great. To encounter the great may seem easy, but discipleship and the accountability of discipleship will always be based on seeing and meeting the least. Our task, while there is still time, is to take note of what we see….When Lord did we see you hungry….We can only encounter and engage with what we see.

This feast of Christ the King calls us to see with the same comprehensive vision that Christ now has, as vision that encompasses all of humanity. And seeing, to go forth and meet it not as other, as different, but as a part of myself, a part of ourselves. For this so-called stranger may need our care, our thoughtfulness, our kindness and our generosity. Christ was raised to restore a solidarity and communion within humanity. For that he was wounded and gave his life. When we begin to become part of the process of nurturing human dignity, community and freedom, then we are cultivating the fruits of the Kingdom culture that Jesus will one day come and hand over to God the Father who is all in all.

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 6:12–16
1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
Matthew 25:1–13

At the end of the liturgy of baptism, a candle is lit from the paschal candle and presented to the newly baptized with these words:

Your have been enlightened by Christ. Walk always as a child of light. Keep this flame of faith alive in your heart. When the Lord comes, may you go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.

Behind this short presentation of the baptismal candle lies the parable we hear today of the Wise and Foolish young women. Intrinsic to baptism is light and enlightenment. With baptism comes the mission to keep the light burning until the Lord comes. No sooner are we plunged into this new life in Christ then we hear of his coming again.

As we come to the end of our liturgical year, we are drawn to the Lord’s coming. We are reminded that we know not the day or the hour only that he is coming. The very first generation of Christians thought they would see that coming in their lifetime. He did not come and that delay is reflected in both Paul’s letter and in Matthew’s Gospel. Paul assures the community that it does not matter whether you are dead or alive when the Lord comes; he will come for all. Matthew shifts the focus from anxiety about the delay (they can’t be anxious because all fall asleep!) to rather how prepared are you for the coming. The stress lies on what are we to do now so that when the time comes, the bridegroom can truly be met appropriately.

The words about Jesus’ second coming don’t strike a loud cord for most of us. Only those few who make predictions about it are concerned, but then they seem to have missed the Lord’s word about not knowing day or hour. That belongs to the Father. Perhaps what is more urgent is that of our own personal end. In drifting from consciousness about Jesus’ coming and some end time, we might also drift from remembering there is the personal end of our biological life. This may have awakened somewhat in the face of covid-19 when our end can be closer than we thought. It can draw closer to us each day as we hear about the number of deaths rising. Of course, we can always say, well that is someone else surely, not me.

The parable of Jesus offers us an image of what the end will look like, or better what Jesus’ coming will look like. It is in the images of the parable that we can find some way to approach the need for preparedness.

What the ten women are about is a meeting. This is the focus in the first sentence of the parabe. The midnight cry awakening to action is: “Behold the bridegroom, come out to meet him!” And when he comes, they meet him and with him enter the wedding feast. What the women are waiting for is to meet the Lord so they can join him in the wedding banquet. The end, the goal is the wedding banquet. This is the image of our end, of our next life as some like to say. And entrance into that wedding feast is meeting the Lord. The waiting and the excitement are about a meeting with the Lord. The wedding feast provides the occasion; it is the climax to the preparation. At the heart of it all is meeting the Lord and being with him. This is our goal. And life now is living and acting in a way that exhibits the meeting that is to come.

At the beginning of his Gospel, Matthew introduces Jesus to us as Emmanuel, God with us. He is God’s commitment to us; he is God’s presence with us. God wants to be with us. Baptism puts us in the direction of transforming our longing into being with the Lord. Our discipleship is really about shaping our lives to respond to the Lord’s wanting to be with us. Our thirsting, our longing, as we sang, is to be with the Lord. In the parable Jesus affirms that longing as our real identity.…Some of us may find ourselves locked out from the great banquet. How did that happen? The bridegroom did not see his face in us. He did not see that our lives were shaped by wanting to be with him. We said the words, but our actions did not match a heart that truly mirrored him in this world. Our longing went awry.

In the parable the crisis comes just when the call to meet goes out. Some women realized they had no more oil. They were not prepared for the meeting. They appealed for help but no one could offer more oil. The oil is not just a thing; the oil is what keeps the flame going. The oil is my life of longing. I can’t give you that inner life that directs me in ways that nurture my longing. What keeps my longing, what keeps my light burning brightly is doing the Father’s will. The person doing the Father’s will is wise, Jesus says. And it is precisely keeping the Father’s word, his desire, his plan for us alive in our hearts that we pray for in the prayer Jesus taught us. And that longing and desire, you and I cannot buy and you cannot get at the last minute before the meeting. Preparation for the meeting is something you and I grow with and into until the day of meeting. We carry that wanting to be with the Lord within our very being. The words of Jesus when he came as Emmanuel awakened that longing within the human heart. The longing had died or was misdirected. Acting on the word of God is keeping oil in the lamp. That is what Jesus will see on the day he comes to meet us: someone who acted on his word. It is too late on that day to clothe him in the naked or welcome him in the stranger; it is too late at midnight to reconcile with enemy or friend; it is too late on that night to go around asking for forgiveness and going the extra mile. The parable makes it clear: the meeting at midnight really happened in the daylight over many years and in all those opportunities for a kind word or a gesture of healing and peace an admittance of wrong.

Women are central to our Word today. Notice that the ten virgins or young women are not the only women offered us today. There is God’s wisdom personified as Lady Wisdom. She is looking for us, desiring to be with us, sitting outside our door, right there in the morning. She is there in our daily rounds and flow of life. She is God’s gift to us to help us in our seeking, or desiring and longing. She is there so that we stay focused. In a real way, she prepares us for our great meeting. But even here, we must want her, be looking for her. She is always there. Even in these times of uncertainty and confusion, a time of seeming lack of focus on what is basically human, she has not left us. She is ready when we are. And her presence too is imagined as one of meeting. She wants to meet with us “in all solicitude.” Hers is a way of caring, of reminding us of the word that gives life. She is present graciously; she is a gift. She is the gift the wise virgins accepted and so had oil till the end of their days. She is the gift that provides entry to be with the Lord forever.

Our Eucharist, too, is preparation for the wedding feast of the Kingdom. From it we take the oil of the Word and sacrament. These will help us to keep that baptismal candle burning so that whether awake or asleep, when the cry comes, we will be with the Lord at last. We are waiting now for that final meeting, one that is gracious, filled with solicitude and with the joy that comes with a wedding. Let us accept the gift of wisdom’s oil so that we will be ready to meet him when He comes. For he will come.

~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

All Souls Day - 2020

Wisdom 3:1–9
Romans 5:5–11
John 6:37–40

The Wisdom writer sets the tone for the commemoration today. The tone is one of hope and love: “The faithful shall abide with him in love; grace and mercy are with his holy ones; his care is with his elect.”

Today’s remembrance must be set in the background and foreground of mercy. Those we remember today are the beneficiaries of God’s love, his outreach, his creating arm. Paul continues the theme when he presents Jesus as the proof of God’s love. And that proof is that Christ enters into the reality of sin on our behalf, sin’s greatest face being death. God’s love for us is manifest in his Son’s willingness to take on our humanity to its depths. God’s mission is bringing us back into the fold of his embrace. The remembrance today of those whom we knew and those whom we do not know, we are about all the dead today, is fundamentally to recall how God’s mercy wins in the end. Death is not the end even if it looks like it. What is the end is God’s fidelity to our flesh.

Jesus makes the point very clear: I came to do the Father’s will. And his will is that nothing belonging to him be lost. The Father is about saving not losing. So, if there is any hint of judgment that we would like to bring to anyone whom we may have known or heard about, today it is taken away from us. Instead, Jesus takes over and says, it is life that I am about. The love the Father has poured into my heart, I have poured into yours in the Spirit. And that love means life.

Today we are given the opportunity to profess faith in our solidarity with the human race— Our solidarity with humanity as it experiences death. No doubt each of us will bring to mind parents, relatives, friends…all those we lost and can name. But, in reality today is about all who have passed from this world and to see them connected with the Lord of the living. We understand ourselves as one with the masses of those gone before us. Yet at the same time, we understand that they belong to the Father just as we belong to the Father. And we understand that we too will join them in solidarity in dying.

We believe that when God created he saw that everything was good, very good when it came to us human beings. It is easy for us to affirm that in what is alive. We might hesitate to say that death is part of that good. But today we also say that even in death God has seen it and transformed it into a good. Jesus in the flesh takes our death and transforms it into a means and entrance into eternal life.

We remember all who have died, those who died in Christ through baptism and those whose faith is known to the Father alone. Today we remember them in mercy, as chosen and loved. And in this Eucharist we will touch Jesus’ communion with us in his death so that we can have a share in the life and love he promises to those who are faithful.

~ Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB


Holy Mass - 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time-2020

Isaiah 5:1–7
Philippians 4:6–9
Matthew 21:33–43

Vineyards are in the news these days. But the news is not good. The wildfires have approached and burned down and out some of the well-known vineyard areas of our country in Napa and Sonoma Valleys, California. It is a loss for the vineyard owners who had restaurants and guest houses on these vineyards and a loss for those of us who enjoyed drinking the vintage from these vineyards.

And vineyards are in the news we hear from the Scriptures today as well. And for both vineyards we are asked to visit in the parables given us, the news seems not always to be so cheerful as the drink that comes from these vineyards implies. But, if vineyards are not part of our immediate experience here today, then look closely at the stories. Harvest is very much a part of our stories today. And harvest we know firsthand these days. It features in household conversation. And there is harvest language in abundance in our stories: for these stories are about yield, produce, fruit. Two vineyards are offered us today. They are both parables inviting us to be part of the experience. But upon an attentive listening the stories have their own nuances.

Isaiah offers us a poem a friend of God sings of God’s vineyard. It starts out as a love poem but ends up on a very discordant note, a sour note we might say, literally and figuratively. We first hear about the love God has for his vineyard. God has shown tender love for his vineyard, a vineyard we know is an image for his own people. He spaded it, cleared it and planted it with choicest vines. God has invested himself in this vineyard, he has shown tender love for his people. He has spared nothing in time and labor. He did not hire anyone else to do the work; he did it himself. He protected his people so that others would do it no harm. He got everything ready for the harvest, even building a special wine press. We could ask ourselves if we even notice God’s loving care in our lives. God is nurturing us the chosen and choicest vine and giving us opportunities to bear fruit—for us as individuals and also for us as a believing community, the church. So what have I or we done with God’s nurturing care, with his opportunities for doing good?

When the time came for the harvest, the narrator says, the vintner found only sour grapes. The tone of his love song changes. We hear a cry from the heart: What more could I have done for my vineyard? What more could I do? How many a parent has not uttered the same when after years of nurturing, educating and coaxing, a child goes in a very different direction. How often have we heard that lament from a parent: Where did I go wrong, what did I forget to do? This lament is born of love. The same for our God over his community.

For Isaiah it is clear in the parable: it is the vineyard itself that has gone wrong, not the vintner, not the God of his people. The poem ends up saying that the community in some way resisted what God was cultivating it to be. It produced wild grapes. It did not take to the love and care that had been shown it. The community was under the care of God but in the end it distorted that care. In the poem God makes it very clear where the failure lies. For when God came looking for the yield of his vineyard what did he expect to find: judgment and justice he says. This is fruit that the God of Israel expected to find in a people that were his very own.

Justice for Isaiah, justice in God’s covenantal relationship means fair and equitable relationships in the community. God is about justice and those who belong to God are also to be about his justice. This justice looks like honest dealings among members. Justice is lacking, then, when one group of people take advantage of a weaker group; justice is lacking when no space is given for a word from those who are down and out; justice is failing when labor is reduced to profit and not the enhancement of a worker’s dignity and self worth. And justice is gone when the poor and vulnerable of any kind are no longer even seen but rather passed over or passed by or worse, kept out; and justice is not about tearing down my name, my honor to make you look strong for injustice is found in words as much as in action.

All that says the poet is nothing but a vineyard of wild grapes, sour grapes. Over that, God laments. The justice he has come looking for in the community he nurtured, he sees and hears has turned into bloodshed and shouts of violence. Isaiah, like his fellow prophets knows what that means; it means collapse of the community. A community belonging to God that does not reflect God’s justice is not a community in the truth.

Isaiah’s parable about the vineyard gone wild and sour puts us on notice. If we are serious about being the people of God, then we need to heed the spading, the clearing and the planting of the best that our God is doing with us. No matter how you read Isaiah’s parable or Jesus’ parable, the end is a judgment on our life now. And the judgement is whether we are true to our identity as the people who belong to God. The judgement is one we actually determine by our remaining within the framework of the covenant Jesus has renewed in his death and resurrection. And that covenant will always have at is heart a care for the other, a concern for the one who has lost their voice and their place in the human family. You were a slave and I freed you. You were dead and I brought you to life. That is our God’s clearing and spading. He cannot force us to accept what he has done for us; that is our part of the work of bearing fruit. But he has given us a word and example how it is to be done and that it can be done. The Father has given us the Son, rejected and scorned, to be the foundation of the community of the new covenant.

Between our vineyard parables, we hear Paul offering a word of encouragement to his favorite and beloved community at Philippi. He is speaking of the kind of fruit that will mark their community. In truth, he is perhaps giving us a view as to what our fruit can look like. He offers it to us to taste: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise..think about these things…then the God of peace will be with you” (Phil 4:8–9).

This is the kind of fruitful community we long for—for ourselves, our church and our country. Let us recognize this fruit the Father of the vineyard is nurturing in us and make it our own…then there will be shalom, peace—then the Father’s love will have borne fruit.

~ Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB


Anniversary of the Dedication of the Priory Chapel

Isaiah 56:1, 6–7
Ephesians 2:19–22
John 4:19–2

We are all a little more sensitive to worship spaces these days. Some have been open; others have been open but not for major celebrations with many people. Then there are the restrictions of numbers and distance. Even today, when we are to be celebrating the anniversary of the dedication of the monastery chapel as a place of prayer and sacrament, we cannot gather in it. It is in reality the feast day of that sacred place, the anniversary when that place became a place dedicated to our God. Yet it will not hold us for the Eucharist today. Our space is too small for distancing. We have to celebrate some of that feast day keeping distance from the very place where for over forty years the monastic community and its guests have prayed and met the Lord.

We have heard a lot about buildings and structures in our Word today: house of prayer, temple, sacred place, dwelling place, foundation, structure, capstone. It would seem, at first glance, to reinforce the importance of sacred buildings where people of faith can gather before God and with one another. It is as though in these special places a presence dwells and is held and God and Jesus become localized. And so we do want them to be beautiful for our God and Father.

Maybe it is a good thing that during this pandemic we must keep our distance from the very sacred dwellings we have grown accustomed to. In this way another understanding of these sacred spaces comes to light. Listen carefully to what Jesus has to say about the treasured sacred places of his tradition and time: The days are coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. You won’t need the Holy City Jerusalem or its temple or for the Samaritans to whom he is talking, Mt Gerazim and its temple. What Jesus says is that it is not the buildings that hold the worshiper in place. Rather, it is life in the Spirit that binds those who worship the Father. And the Spirit is not limited to place and space. The Spirit brings together all those who are in relationship to the Father. The sacred place, the place to worship is in the Spirit that was breathed upon us by Jesus and who was poured into our hearts at baptism. It is living in the Spirit that holds us to Jesus and to the Father. ……And the other binding force among worshipers is the truth. And the truth is quite simple: that Jesus is the Father’s Son. Worship is in fact an acknowledgement that the Father and the Son are living with us in the Spirit. Ultimately, if we want to see what this ‘building’ that holds us worshipers looks like, then Jesus simply tells us, wash one another’s feet. That is how I have loved you and that is how I will know that you are a true worshiper of the Father.

Jesus says that the Father is looking for such people who know the meaning of love because they are living in the Spirit and truth. The building or the temple is physical, but its physicality is in the relationships we have with the Father and in the way we lay down our lives for one another. That can be seen and touched. And when we are doing that, we are in something beautiful.

Paul makes a similar point while staying close to using structural images like foundation and capstone. Jesus is the capstone, he is the point of unity holding us together. His energy, his love, and saving death are the key that holds all in place. The Church is about people living in the truth of Christ. What is marvelous in Paul’s image of the community is that we are in process. We are growing into a temple sacred to the Lord; we are being built together into a dwelling place. The building is not yet finished; we are part of making it happen. If we thought the Church was set and finished, Paul gives us hope today. The process is ongoing. Each of us is still being built into a relationship with one another with Jesus as the capstone; we are leaning into him.

For Paul the coming together in Christ was a coming together of Jew and Gentile. An old faith community and a new faith community in which all are fellow citizens. Once Christ is the binding presence, then our distinctions no longer alienate us from the other but become part of the new whole that is being built by God. What we think can separate us from one another can come together in Christ. What seemed so disparate, so distant from others now becomes part of the household of God. There are no second-class citizens, there are only citizens and members of God’s household. Our community membership is not based on our criteria but on that of being aligned to the capstone that is Christ. That will make us into a real dwelling place for God.

Isaiah could not make God’s criteria any clearer. “My house is to be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” God seeks and God chooses not to be exclusive but to be inclusive. Our God is looking for foreigners and strangers to come to him. He is looking for the extended family. We may gather normally in limited space. But God’s point is the space is not limited because the Spirit of God is not limited.

Perhaps it is a blessing that we are not gathered in the very house of God whose dedication we celebrate today. We are fasting from that space so that we can grasp the breadth of God’s vision for those who make up the community of believers, the community of worshipers. Today we are to think of the Church as a gathering space in the Spirit where the Father’s love is active and alive. We are really celebrating the gift of the relationship we have with the Father through the Son. A gift manifested by living in the Spirit. It is the Spirit who weaves us all together as citizens of the one family obeying the command of love that works the justice of our God.

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

Holy Mass - 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time-2020

Jeremiah 20:7–9
Romans 12:1–2
Matthew 16:21–27

“You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.” Thus Jeremiah begins his lament to God. The pathos in Jeremiah’s lament is clear and strong. What is translated here as ‘duped’ might better be rendered as ‘enticed’ or ‘seduced.’ God called him to be a prophet to tear down and to plant. But what has happened is that most of his words are about tearing down and destroying. The word of God forces him to speak of violence and outrage. His vocation was basically to tell the people and the religious leaders that their behavior has led to the end of the temple and with it the whole structure of their society.

But Jeremiah is no outsider. He is part of the community, part of its heritage. His pain is that he must speak about the death of what he loves and has committed himself to. Because he spoke about the destruction of the temple, temple officials jailed him. He is eventually released and gives voice to his pain as we hear. We can feel how he wants to belong and be accepted, but instead he is laughed at, mocked, and derided all the time. That is all he hears from those around him. Living with that, he turns to God who sent him this hard word in the first place. God does not appear to be too accommodating or relieving of Jeremiah’s pain. The pain is the pain of being faithful to the very word that the Lord wants Jeremiah to speak. Being faithful to that word of the Lord in the face of authority figures leads to rejection and ridicule. What you say, prophet, cannot be happening to us! You are supposed to speak of good things from God, not destruction and the end of our lives! Who wants to hear that the way we are living will lead to our demise, our end? No wonder Jeremiah was thrown into jail or into an empty cistern. Shut up. No wonder Jesus was led away to be crucified. He too was critical of the way the Torah was being lived and its heart hollowed out.


Jeremiah knows his options. He says, well, I will stop talking. In other words, I will withdraw into myself. I will nurture myself on my own terms and not be told what to do by anyone, even the Lord God. I will choose what to say and when. I will simply leave God out of anything I say, then I’ll be Ok and all those laughing at me will stop…But that option won’t work. God’s word becomes like fire. It has taken over his heart. It is true; he has been seduced by God but that seduction is a part of his vocation. I have to speak the truth. A heart on fire with God’s word. That is Jeremiah. That too is Jesus. Jeremiah is true to his vocation to the end, a bearing of the word. Think of all those Christians who spoke the hard word of truth and suffered for it, were killed for it—in our day.

The Jesus story. Last Sunday when we gathered, we heard the wonderful response of Peter confessing Jesus as Messiah and Son of the Living God. The same living God whose word was fire in Jeremiah’s heart. But before that, Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying Jesus was. The answer he heard was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Jeremiah was specifically mentioned as a possibility for identifying Jesus. These prophetic figures as identity figures are not denied by Jesus or by Peter. They remain true. It is only Matthew who includes Jeremiah in the list, by the way—and rightfully so as we hear this week. Jesus begins to speak a hard word about what Messiah really means or what the Son of God looks like. He speaks of going up to Jerusalem: not for a feast but for suffering at the hands of authorities, for being killed and then for being raised. Jesus will face the same derision and mockery as Jeremiah. He will be taunted for his words. He will asked to save himself from death. But Jesus too has a fidelity burning in his heart, his faithfulness to the word of the Father, the Living God. He will stay the course to the end.

Peter, unfortunately, is thinking of self-preservation, probably as much for himself as for Jesus. When Jesus responds, he calls Peter a Satan, a tempter for not having God’s story upper most in his heart. Then Jesus lays it out in words so simple: lose your life and you will save it; save it now and you will lose it. It is all about getting oneself out of the way and letting yourself be seduced by God. When you are seduced by God then you will know that your life is always about others. Deny that ego-centered self and get with carrying what suffering there is in your life and then follow me. Losing oneself for Jesus can mean dropping the “I” at the beginning of sentences and speaking of “you,” of the “other.” Jesus went up to Jerusalem “for us”; he lost his “I” giving it up for our sake, and then found himself through this unconditional act of loving to the end; he found himself loved or raised to new life.


Jeremiah preached the end of the temple and the breakup of community because the community had gone off the path; Jesus talks about suffering and being killed. He speaks of death. Only then of being raised up. What is it that you and I have to lose, have to let go of, have to surrender, in order to live so as to be raised up. Our cross is perhaps that struggle of having to come to terms with what I have to let go of. Each of us has a different cross, a different struggle with our false self. It is the same for our church community or society. What needs to die so that the truth of God and his love will come forth? What about life together needs to be seen differently? Paul speaks of this process as a transformation, as a renewal of mind. He also makes it clear it will not necessarily be “this age” that will be the model for us.

Ultimately, the road marked out by Jesus, our Messiah, will be the way forward. For that to happen, it will mean shedding a lot of what I have built up, so that my heart and our world can be saved. It is even possible that the days of pandemic are already giving us a clue at where our minds need to be renewed and what word our hearts really need to hear.
Jesus is not forcing anything on us. He says “if you wish.” This is not a command But, if you desire to be part of me, this is what it means—denying an “I” of my making to be saved for an “I” determined by being for others. What do we wish for? Who do we wish to follow? …Let us remember: the models of “this age” do not go far enough!

Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB

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