Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091612.cfm

A spider web
catches sunlight

He began to teach themthat the Son of Man must suffer greatlyand be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,and be killed, and rise after three days.He spoke this openly.



The Man of Mystery often appears in our stories. He is the stranger who comes from somewhere else. No one quite knows where. He is the Lone Ranger, Superman, Kung fu, the Hulk. Or he is some diabolical creature, Godzilla or the Blob, or Cormac McCarthy's bone-chilling Anton Chigurh.The plots of these stories often are built around discovering who this person is; where did he come from; and what does he want.  But, as often, the mystery is not resolved. "Who was that masked man?" someone invariably asked at the end of the episode.With maturity we realize that there is mystery in nearly everyone, and no one. People are just people. Some are better than others but everyone will let you down in one way or another. 

One time, walking past a T-mobile kiosk in a shopping mall, I thought the woman standing there was Catherine Zeta-Jones. I saw her from only the corner of my eye. It couldn't possibly be her -- the most gorgeous woman in the world, by my reckoning. I didn't even slow down. If it was her, I didn't want to meet the real woman and find out that she is not entirely that beautiful, that she might be quite ordinary in some ways.

Mysteries are real but they are bigger than people. Mysteries are the core of our religion. Can the Lord who created the universe care about people like you and me? If God is so good, why is there evil? Why do the innocent die young, and the wicked prosper? Can a woman bear a child and be a virgin? Do Christians believe in one God or three? Can the Son of God be offered to sinners in the forms of bread and wine? Can I ever be worthy to receive such a gift?

Christians live and move and have our being within these mysteries. We cannot answer them. Even to ponder them we hardly know what the question is. But, if we cannot resolve these mysteries, we can celebrate them. This is what we do every time we gather for a Sunday Mass or a Baptism or the Sacrament of Penance.

Emerging from the Rites we are like Jesus, people of mystery. The scriptures come alive in us and words have meaning. Word like the following from the Prophet Isaiah:

The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.

Or our Responsorial Psalm:

I love the LORD because he has heard my voice in supplication, Because he has inclined his ear to me the day I called.

And our refrain: I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Saint James challenges us to live that mystery when he says:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

A fearless Pied-billed Grebe

People should always wonder about us as they wondered about Jesus. Where do come from? And should they ask, we will say, "Come and see! I'm on my way to Mass!"