Thought for the week - 15 September 2024

Today’s Gospel invites us all to make two decisions. Each of these decisions threatens to overturn our whole life and our whole normal way of thinking. Each will demand absolutely everything from us, up to our life itself. We could say that the purpose of St. Mark, in writing his Gospel, is to help us face these decisions, and, by God’s grace, make them our own.

First of all, Jesus himself asks: who do you say I am? Just before that, the disciples told Jesus what other people say. By and large, people could agree that Jesus is a great and authentic religious teacher. Clearly, he fits within the tradition of the Old Testament Saints. But who do you say I am? And as if with the force of an electric shock, Peter makes his declaration. Compared to the parallel account in St Matthew’s Gospel, particularly, this declaration according to St. Mark is stark; stripped to the bone. Simply: You are the Christ. That is: you’re not just one more in the line of prophets. All of them, by definition, pointed beyond themselves, pointed forward. All of them prepared God’s people for a definitive intervention to come. But no. You are yourself the object of their prophecy. You are the one towards whom all sacred history has been moving. In fact, you’re the central reference point for all human history, and even for the whole history of the universe. Through you, God will accomplish all he has promised to Israel. In you, God has made his definitive saving intervention. Beyond you, nothing further is to be expected. You are the reason that the Word was first spoken.

We are here now because we also have reached St. Peter’s conclusion and taken his decision. But we’re also here because we know we have to keep taking it; we have constantly to refresh and renew it.

Everything around us these days seems to conspire to make us let this decision about the identity of Jesus grow gradually cold, and even wither gently away. Modern secularism will tolerate religious belief, to an extent, so long as everyone understands it’s all strictly private, and purely relative. If Jesus is one religious teacher among others; if his preaching is all really just about benevolence and brotherhood; if he offers some people a certain inspiration or personal consolation: fine. But if he is presented as the single and unique mediator between God and man; if we say there is no salvation apart from him; if his demands become inconvenient or painful or sharply counter-cultural: then that cannot be tolerated.

Just before this episode, St. Mark tells how Jesus gave sight to a blind man in Bethsaida. He did it gradually, in stages (Mk 8:22-26). So with the revelation about who Jesus is. By divine inspiration, Peter now sees the truth and declares it. But he doesn’t yet see the implications of this truth, and he quite radically misunderstands what it must involve for Jesus. For complete understanding he will need new grace, new light. He will receive that in its fullness at Pentecost.

But now, Jesus immediately rebukes Peter and begins to teach how he must suffer and die, in order to rise victorious from the dead. And here we are confronted by our second decision. Having accepted who Jesus is, we have to be ready to follow his way. In principle, this will cost us everything.

If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, says Jesus, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (8:34).

Allow me to point again to the pressure exerted on us these days to evade these demands of the Gospel. It seems to me that a great temptation faces the whole Church these days. We want to soften out all the hard and difficult sayings of Jesus, in order to be accepted, liked, even honoured, or at least left alone, by those who hold power and influence in our society. These are no longer the elders and chief Priests and Scribes. They are the media, and those who dictate what is currently politically correct, and those who control big tech., and big finance. Submitting to their dominating will, we can land up keeping the name of Christian, doubtless, but in quite radically secularised form. In St. Paul’s words, we become conformed to this world (Rm 12:2). So we accept Jesus as one who offers us therapy; but not as one who invites us to take up his Cross.

Here then is the paradox of the Gospel. We win our life by giving it away. Denying ourselves, we find ourselves. To decide to follow Jesus, even to the point of martyrdom, is supreme wisdom. Because this is actually what is supremely desirable, beyond all other things whatever. To follow Jesus, to be one with him, wherever he leads, is the greatest grace and blessing anyone could ever attain. Even in this life it brings rewards beyond measure. Beyond that: by this way we come to God, and to eternal life with God in heaven.