22nd Sunday in Ordinary time "A"
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time August 28th 2011
Deacon Kevin F. Reid
Church of the Immaculate Conception
Whoever wishes
to come after me
must deny
himself,and take up his Cross, and Follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will FIND IT.
We gather today and
come together as a faith
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community, we come to be fed with the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we come together to listen to the Word of God Proclaimed and Broken open.
My good friends the truth
is that the Cross that you
see up here on this Altar is not the only one here in this church. Each of us here has a special Cross to carry, each one of them different but
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none the less each is a Cross.
It could be the cross of recently losing a job, of a broken partnership, perhaps Children who have rebelled against their parents, an elderly relative struggling to maintain her independence .
Paul in our second reading this morning is urging the new Converts in Rome
by the mercies of God
to offer up their bodies
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as a living sacrifice, not to be conformed to the present but rather to be TRANSFORMED by the renewal of their minds so that they could DISCERN what is the Will of GOD.
To choose to do what is good, pleasing and perfect to God. This is a type of ongoing conversion that is taking place in the early converts and within our community
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our Church here today just as it happened back in the early church in the time of Paul.
But is it truly God's will that we must suffer, to know him? Suffering is part of the human condition, and we all go through it in one form or another.
Sometimes we in the midst of our suffering do meet God, in those different times when we might feel we are most
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alone, we sometimes meet him in those people that God has sent to be with us.
Sometimes it in our failings, in our betrayals
The prophet Jeremiah suffered for telling the truth, he was mocked and made a fool.
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None of the people wanted to HEAR what he was saying. I'm sure you have heard
the saying "Sometimes the Truth HURTS".
Often as part of our Human Condition we do not want to hear the truth, we WISH to save what we think is important, and ignore what is precious.
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Certainly in today's Gospel Jesus is speaking the TRUTH to his disciples, at this time as they get closer to his destiny, to Jerusalem he
has started to REVEAL to them the TRUTH about his upcoming death and his suffering.
Imagine how hard it was for Jesus to be obedient
to the point of Death, to suffer by friends who would
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betray and abandon him, for a people who would in the same week greet him with palms as their King
by shouting out "Hosanna Blessed is he who comes in the NAME OF THE LORD".
A week later this same crowd would shout out to the Roman Governor "Crucify HIM".
They would choose to crucify him over a convicted
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murderer.
Jesus has told them all of this so that they might come to UNDERSTAND who he was and why he came down from Heaven to be one of us.
Peter big bag of wind that he was at the time says "God forbid Lord" Nothing like this should ever happen to YOU. Like he himself could prevent or dissuade Jesus from letting this happen.
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Jesus sees Peter as a STUMBLING BLOCK, and he shouts "GET BEHIND ME SATAN",he has come to terms with what he MUST DO, and nothing or any one can stop him.
Peter in his usual voice proclaims that THIS should never happen, certainly not if this was HIS Way.
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Sometimes we can stumble over ourselves, Peter back in the time before Christ was crucified, certainly if we think back and remember did this more then once .
My Sisters and Brothers what kind of Stumbling blocks, what fears do we have in our lives, what
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are the things are holding us back or causing us to stumble.
Maybe possibly to even give up, on our wishes, hopes dreams and commitments.
Christ mentions to Peter that HE is not thinking like God does, sadly my friends often we don't think like God does either, we let our fears run wild and forget how to trust
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each other and even to trust God.
I think that it's safe for us to say that God sees the " Big Picture" he is able to see down the road.
He knows the difficult road that we are on, knows what is BEST for us because he knows and understands
our fears, our hangups, he himself has traveled as we do with friends and family.
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When we fail he forgives us, he loves us and supports us through all of our darkest times, and rejoices when we come BACK.
He comes to greet us today with his Holy Spirit,with his body and blood here at the Altar.
After he rose into heaven, he sent his Holy Spirit to Peter and the others hiding
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alone in the upper room
in Jerusalem, it was Peter the former bag of wind who led the others and went out into the streets where they proclaimed the miracle of the Resurrection.
My Brothers and Sisters we know that Simon was probably a pretty good fisherman before he met Jesus. He would not have
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survived in his occupation if he wasn't one.
But after he met Jesus and became one of his followers he was able to find his true calling as a FISHER of MEN.
He gave up his old life of dragging nets through the Sea of Galilee and now with his new one he found himself as the leader of the Apostles.
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He was renamed PETER by Jesus. He is the first of our Popes, the beginning of the Apostolic Succession, he is the foundation named the Rock of our Church.
There were probably times when he wished for the relative safety of his former occupation, he stumbled more then once, but he persevered.
We know that he had
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his heart changed by his encounter with Jesus, after the Resurrection and after that, he just like Jeremiah could no longer hold himself BACK.
Many famous people have overcome adversity and found their calling after they
"Came to Jesus", many of the Saints were outcasts, considered flakes they went against the grain of contemporary society.
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An example of that in
our recent time was
Saint Maximilian Kolbe,
a Franciscan priest in
Poland who was sent to a Concentration Camp for opposing the Nazis, after an attempt by eight prisoners to escape, eight prisoners were lined up to be shot, one was a Father of small children.
Just as they were about to be shot Maximilian volunteered
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to take his place he gave up his life so that this father who was going to lose his would be spared.
What better example of living out the teachings of Jesus can we find?
He gave his life to gain eternal life.
There are many more examples of this type of selfless giving. Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta
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who gave her everything to those who had nothing.
Another contemporary example would be with Dietrich Bonhoeffer who also gave up his life.He did it by resisting the tyranny of Hitler. The Nazis had Nationalized the Lutheran Church and Bonhoeffer led others away to a new break away church.
He wrote not long before
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he was executed that “The Christian also has to undergo temptations, he too has
to bear the sins of others;
he too must bear their shame and be driven like a scapegoat from the gate of the city.
He goes on to say that “He would certainly break down under this burden, but for the support of HIM who bore the sins of ALL.
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He finishes by saying that “ My Brothers burden which I MUST bear is not only his outward life, his natural characteristics and gifts, but quite literally his sin. and that the only way to bear that sin is to forgiving it in the POWER of the Cross of Christ in which I now share.
In the end perhaps one of the most difficult Crosses for any of us to carry is the Cross of Forgiveness, those wounds
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are often the deepest ones that we choose to carry.
Dear Friends if we look to the example of the dying Jesus when He said “Forgive them Father for they know not what they have done’. We soon remember that he is still with us, always there with us carrying his cross along side of ours.
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