Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 420

Then Peter said to him in reply,
“We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you
that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Saint Peter, speaking for you and me, speaks rightly. By our Baptism we have given up everything to follow the Lord. And we cannot help but wonder, “What will there be for us?”

Sitting on twelve thrones, as the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, and judging the twelve tribes is certainly an interesting vision. What it means is not so clear. Few of us are eager to judge our families and tribes though we might occasionally indulge in sanctimonious gossip about them.

On further reflection, we realize the Lord’s throne of glory was the cross, and we are reminded that we must take up our crosses daily and follow in his steps.

The vision is partial. There is something gleaming and beautiful there in the future. It may be coming rapidly at us like the thunderstorm that overtook Ahab and Elijah. Or it may be pending, a promise like Don Quixote’s impossible dream; fascinating, intoxicating, worthy of our intense devotion, unbearably close and yet unreachable. 

We are guided by faith, hope, and love. And the longer we continue on this quest the farther its end seems to recede. If, in the 1960’s, I thought that Camelot was attainable, I learned that King Arthur was only flirting with Guinevere as he described his magic kingdom. The once and future Garden of Eden never was and never could be.

It is, as Odysseus remarked in Tennyson’s poem, an “untraveled world whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.” But, like Odysseus, we cannot rest: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! / As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life / Were all too little….” 

Guided by faith, we drink from the springs of scripture and prayer each day. If the stories seem old and irrelevant to many of our family and friends, to us they are more reliable and urgent than the morning news. Guided by hope, we expect with a divine expectation that the seeds we plant today will flourish and bear fruit. Our hope is palpable like the flesh of a melon in August; its perfume is sweet in our nostrils. Guided by love, we can no more abandon the Lord and his people than He can abandon us. Faith, hope, and love are the Spirit of Jesus that compel us as it compelled him.

Have we given up everything? Peter knew his shortcomings as well as you and I know ours. But he spoke truly. For it was God the Holy Spirit who prompted his words. As severe as our shortcomings, faults, and failings may be, we press on like Saint Paul:

It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ [Jesus]. Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.