24th Sunday Year B - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2024

We are in no position to blame Peter. The Jesus he knew was unique. He had an undeniable charisma — people felt an air of authority naturally flowing out from him. He captivated them. He had power to work miracles. The Twelve felt an obvious pride to have been singled out from all Jesus’ other disciples to be with him, to be trusted by him, even to have been sent out to prepare people to hear the message of Jesus.

When questioned by Jesus regarding the identity of Jesus, Peter had no hesitation in confessing his conviction that Jesus was himself the Christ, the one especially “anointed by God”, the long-awaited powerful leader of the nation of Israel, destined indeed by God to reign over the whole world.

Jesus had a different sense of himself and his Messiahship. It seemed to have preoccupied his mind right from the start of his public life. Already, right after his baptism by John, when he went into the Judean wilderness by himself to pray, he was tempted precisely by the possibilities of power, celebrity status and wealth. At that stage he handled the temptations with seemingly little cost.

Over the time of his public ministry, Jesus came to see those possibilities as very real alternatives — discovering at the same time just how contrary they were to his message and his ever strengthening convictions. He came increasingly to see that the mission given him by his Father to save the world from itself meant precisely a clear and firm renouncing of the pursuit of power, prestige and wealth, and the violence they engender and inevitably require.

Jesus’ message was insistently to emphasise the need for universal forgiveness, personal humility and simplicity of lifestyle, along with a determined and risky commitment to non-violence. The catch, though, with that would always be, in a still unredeemed world, the need to accept the radical consequences of non-violence. In terms of his own destiny, Jesus could read the writing on the wall for himself. As we heard in today’s Gospel, “… the Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death…”. Jesus was challenging Peter to break free from the overwhelming, powerful influence of community attitudes and to change radically his sense of Jesus’ Messiahship.

Peter would have none of it and strongly disagreed with Jesus… which led to Jesus in turn strongly rebuking Peter, even to identifying Peter’s attitude with that of Satan who had earlier in the Judean wilderness tried persistently, but vainly, to tempt Jesus.

This led Jesus to call the crowd together around him and to tell them, “If people want to be followers of mine, let them renounce themselves and take up their cross and follow me…”. Luke does not tell us what the reactions of Jesus’ would-be followers were — but we can imagine that it led to a lot of restless soul-searching that evening.

How seriously does Jesus expect us to take him — his message, his life and his death?

Over the last couple of days, I have been wondering what Dr. Mary Glowery, who was the pioneer President of the Catholic Women’s Social Guild [forerunner of the present Catholic Women’s League], would have been thinking in her fertile mind and heart — energised no doubt by today’s Gospel passage. Personally, she went on to give years of her life later on working as a doctor in India where she tirelessly looked after the sick and disabled who came to the hospitals she founded. She was not scared to engage with the poor and disabled, the social rejects and outcasts, whom she encountered there. Over the years the members of the League [and I remember that my own mother was one] have worked hard to help others in need — spreading the love and forgiveness of Jesus among their neighbours.