Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 131

Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Christ.” 

Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly....

Christ's mission is to suffer. That is also the meaning of service. A service that is self-serving, performed to satisfy one's needs, to fulfill one's potential, or to Be all that you can be, is certainly not done in imitation of Christ. If others profit by the action and everybody wins, it may be a bargain of enlightened self-interest. 

Not every good deed must be painful; nor will it not have its rewards. But if it is from God, there are costs to the self. There is the risk of loss and a vulnerability to exploitation. The generous act might not be recognized, appreciated, or thanked. It might appear meaningless and feel like toil. 

Pope Saint John Paul II said of work and toil: 

...man's life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity, but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of human toil and suffering, and also of the harm and injustice which penetrate deeply into social life within individual nations and on the international level. 

 And in the same encyclical -- On Human Labor -- he wrote:

"The Christian finds in human work a small part of the Cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted his Cross for us. In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the Resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of "the new heavens and the new earth" in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work. Through toil-and never without it.

"On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never apart from work."

"Through toil-and never without it." We must reflect on that. Secularism, which the ancients would recognize as idolatry, wants to create a space between God's purposes and work in this world. They suppose there are good things which we can experience, choose, and create which an Absent God (deus otiosis) doesn't care about. We're free do as we choose, and to live apart from God. 

But that is not the God we meet in scripture, nor would Jesus know of him. The Christ -- whose name means anointed in the Spirit and sent by the LORD -- lives sacrificially. The Christian -- baptised in the Name and aspiring to be worthy of it -- also lives sacrificially. Our work is alway sacrifice for the common good. It is a witness (μάρτυρας mártyras) to God's presence among us. 

Ojos de Dios
Eye of God

Christians live always with the eye of God upon us, this awareness of God's benevolent gaze is our privilege and delight. Nor do we know much of duty, that sacrifice which is made to the unnamed gods of secularity. Our food and drink is to do God's will, especially as we share our faith. 

In today's gospel, the Christ revealed to his clueless disciples the meaning of Messiah, and then the cost of discipleship:

Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.