24th SUNDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER 2021: ISAIAH 50. 5-9; JAMES 2. 14-18; MARK 8. 27-35
Focus: Following Jesus is a call for a deeply personal God experience, and nothing else can substitute for it. It essentially involves struggle and sacrifice leading to a more profound gain and lasting victory
1. Discipleship is essentially a call to be rooted in God, in the intimacy of His experience, and nothing else can substitute for it. And this has to be something very personal, though it will certainly have wider implications in collective experience and commitment.
2. The crucial question is who is Jesus for me? What is my personal experience of Jesus? What counts most is the personal experience of Jesus, and not merely what is heard or learned from others. What others say, what we learn from others, what we receive from them, comes only to a certain point of the journey of encounter with the Lord. But ultimately it is each one personally that has to make the journey with the Lord.
3. “Who do people say I am?”, “Who do you say I am?”, a question posed by Jesus to his disciples. The same is today addressed to each of us personally. Is the question of Jesus, “Who am I?” (for the people / for you), a sign of identity crisis? A sign of a psychological process of self-realization and self-discovery? A sign of natural human curiosity or inquisitiveness to know what others say about oneself? A sign of a natural, ordinary human seeking recognition and affirmation? The answer is a definitive NO.
4. The question of Jesus, who am I? is a question that invites and challenges us for a sincere and authentic self-discovery, and for a profound and core identity. We can discover our true self, realize our core identity, only in relation to Jesus, only in bonding with him, in intimacy and communion with him.
5. “What Jesus is to us, makes us what we are”. It is not a mere matter of saying who Jesus is but experiencing and living who he is. Not enough that words and expressions about Jesus do abound unless experience does abound. All our acclamations and assertions, professions, and proclamations should not be mere collections of formulations, but rather expressions, extensions, and expansions of deeper and consistent experience and love of the Lord.
6. Not enough to say ‘Lord, Lord’, but is also needed to surrender to him. It is not enough to call Jesus ‘Master’, but is also needed to be loyal to him and to follow in his footsteps. It is not enough to acclaim him as ‘Savior’ but is also needed to be saved and liberated, to experience and live that touch and power of salvation and liberation. It is not enough to praise him as ‘Healer’ but is also needed to be healed, to show the effects and signs of healing. It is not enough to proclaim his as ‘guide’ but is also needed to be rightly guided and to avoid all tendencies to be wrongly influenced and misguided. It is not enough to attest him as ‘Light’ but is needed to be illumined, to be enlightened. It is not enough to sing him as ‘Love’, but is also needed to love him totally and passionately. It is not enough to claim him as our strength and power but is also needed to be strengthened and empowered by him. It is not enough to believe him as our nourishment but is also needed to be nurtured by him.
7. In other words, our experience and concrete life of witness must go together. Our faith must be seen and shown in the quality of life of good actions. It is in this sense we can understand the admonition of James in the second reading about harmony between faith and works. Faith without works, a faith that is limited only to lip service, is shallow and worthless.
8. A true faith experience also contains an unshaken spirit of docility and surrender to suffer and sacrifice, to be patient and persevering amidst trials and adversities, and to remain undauntedly loyal and committed. This is the call that we get from the image of the suffering servant of Yahweh in the first reading from Isaiah. The same is the clearest indication and message in the gospel as well. Jesus speaks of his own suffering and death for salvation. He also places the same demand on his followers, “to deny self, to take up the cross and follow him”
Direction: We must go beyond our contradictory tendencies and live a more harmonious living of grace. We must integrate faith and works. We must be ready to lose our self so as to gain it for eternity
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