22nd Sunday Ordinary Time cycle A. Ngay 20,21 / thang 08 / 2005

Các Trưởng và Thiếu Nhi Thân mến,

Last week, if we can remember, Jesus called Peter the rock of faith. This week Jesus calls Peter a devil. Last week, Christ said, ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church;’ but today we hear Christ telling Peter, ‘get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.’
Why is Jesus so harsh with Peter today? Because Peter started to think in worldly terms. When Christ says he has to go to Jerusalem, to suffer, and be killed, Peter went into shock. Peter like every Israelite, still thought Jesus would make Israel the powerful kingdom, just as when David was king.
That’s the problem: Peter hopes for a kingdom of this world. But God’s kingdom is not of this world. So, Jesus scolds Peter, tells him, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’

My dear brothers and sisters,
I would like to stop here for a moment, and let us focus on the conversation and think of the two characters Jesus and Peter. It seems both have a plan. Jesus’ plan is to go to Jerusalem to suffer and to be killed. In the case of Jesus, his plan has two important elements to fulfil the will of God and to die to save us.
The keys statement here is the will of God. How do we know what is the will of God for us in our lives? This is a big question. And in my understanding, an answer to this question is that God’s will is that he wants us to live a life that leads us to become more perfect like him. That means, in our lives, God always loves us, he has never had any intention of taking away our freedom, our happiness; or making us miserable. But he would like us through whatever we have to face in our lives, our struggles, our problems, our happiness, will lead us to a deeper experience of God, and hence to our own perfection.

This is the will of God; this is the way of life that God wants us to follow and live. However, this will of God many times contradicts our way of thinking and goes against what we want in our lives. Peter is a good example of this. As Jesus tells him what he is about to do, Peter then rebukes Jesus, takes him aside, and tells him to stop it. It is because the way of God’s thinking is not a same as Peter’s. In this case, Peter is looking totally in a different direction. Peter also has his own plan. His plan is to become a servant of the great king who will bring back the glorious victory for the Israelite people and their kingdom on earth. His plan and God’s plan are totally opposite to each other. To resolve it, Jesus was firm and made sure the will of God was to be fulfilled and accomplished.
The question for us to reflect on is what about ourselves? Do we have any plan for our lives? How often we think in worldly ways and how easily we ignore the ways of God. Living and following the will of God is not easy. Sometime it will take our lives. I like to take you back to the first reading today. It is beautiful reading and a great lesson for us to learn. In our first reading we heard the prophet Jeremiah, one of the major prophet, in the Old Statement. In his life, on one occasion, Jeremiah complained to God, he said: You have duped me, God. Look at me, ‘everyone mocks me, laughs at me. All because I speak the message you, God, told me to speak.
What was the message? Temple worship had become corrupted. Priests were performing pagan rites. So God told Jeremiah to condemn this wickedness. Jeremiah took an earthen jar, went to the city gates, and smashed the jar. Then Jeremiah announced that like the jar, Jerusalem would be destroyed. So corrupt had the people become, God would destroy the holy city.
The priests did not like being criticized. Jeremiah condemned the priest, so the priests arrested Jeremiah, beat the prophet, threw him into jail. As Jeremiah sat in the jail throughout the night, the prophet felt betrayed by God. After all, Jeremiah had done exactly what God had told him to do, and here he was sitting in jail, suffering from the stings of being beaten. Jeremiah asked God, why me?
What happened to Jeremiah, did he get out? What had God planned for him? To find out, you need to read the book of the prophet. But the point I want to make here is to follow, and do the will of God, which is very demanding and sacrificial for us.
‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me? It is not easy for one to carry his cross every day to follow Jesus. What are the daily crosses? We can identify them with all kinds of burden we have in our daily lives. But let us not to forget this: the grace of God accompanies us always with every cross we bear. And secondly, I think, it is part of God’s mysterious plan that we carry a cross because it keeps us closer to God. When we have to carry a cross, we depend more on God. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said that suffering are the kisses of Jesus in our lives.

My dear Brothers and Sisters, God does not want us to suffer, we have no idea of what God in his goodness has in store for us in the next life. Let us pray today for each one, that as we are living our lives, we have the courage to accept and carry our daily cross according to God’s will. For after the cross, there is the resurrection. Christ promises to reward us according to our conduct. The final reward is heaven and being joined with God. For now, let us go together in love and support one another in our journey to the kingdom of God. Amen.