For a holiday weekend, we sure had a lot going on.
We had a beautiful wedding this weekend with Jenna and Jake. It was so moving, even the cake was in tiers.
For a holiday weekend, we sure had a lot going on.
We had a beautiful wedding this weekend with Jenna and Jake. It was so moving, even the cake was in tiers.
Moving on…let’s talk about the readings that that Church gives us this week. I’m going to talk about holy longing and holy sacrifice.
Jesus’ words to St. Peter seem pretty harsh given that he has just given him the keys to the Kingdom. What’s going on here? Why is Peter getting chewed out for thinking like human beings do and not like God does?
Jeremiah helps us to understand the context. What a marvelous passage about how the word of God burns like a fire in his heart. He has to let it out or he will burst.
And then the Psalmist who reminds us that our souls “are thirsting for you, O Lord my God.”
Indeed. There is a God-shaped hole in our heart, a holy longing for communion from the very depths of our soul, a deep desire for meaning and belonging that can only be satisfied by union and right relationship with God and others. This is exactly what the prophet Jeremiah and the Psalmist are getting at. St. Augustine also quipped, “Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in you.”
The problem, of course, is that we silly human beings are easily distracted (Squirrel!). All too often we try to fill that holy longing for lasting communion with all kinds of shiny, twinkly things in the world that tempt us. St. Thomas Aquinas observed that these were typically wealth, pleasure, power or honor. Like fast food, they fill us for a little while, but in the end, they always leave us empty, unsatisfied, and discontent. These are the things that Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars to convince us will make us happy. They are not bad in and of themselves, but if they become our central desire, then we are thinking “not as God does, but as human beings do.”
This is why Jesus calls his best friend St. Peter, Satan, and right after he gives him the keys to the Kingdom. Like all the disciples, St. Peter is still thinking that Jesus has come to establish the very political kingdom of Israel. He is seeing exercise of power in the way that the world sees and uses power, not as God sees and uses power.
Jesus sets him straight immediately. Authority and power in the Kingdom of heaven is not simply being able to compel others to do your will. That is domination. Rather, authority in the Kingdom, and thus in the Church, is only fruitful when it is exercised in service to others. Christ himself told us what he means when he said, “The Son of Man have come to serve, not to be served.” He showed us when he washed the feet of the disciples as he instituted the ministerial priesthood at the Last Supper. The exercise of authority in the Church only makes sense when it is done in the context of service to God and others. Sometimes this means great sacrifice. But where love is present, sacrifice comes readily.
Jesus picked up his cross as the supreme act of service and sacrifice for us. Can we who would be his disciples do otherwise?