28 September 2019
Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
September marks the beginning of football season in the United States, which will end in January. Both at the college and professional levels, we see many teams competing to win the championship. We all know that many enter the season, but not all win, because in the end, only one team will finally win the championship. The fact of the matter is that there is just a few big winners and the rest are losers, not only during the Superbowl or College Football Playoff National Championship, but also in this world. We certainly do not want to accept the reality that most of us are losers in much of what we do. We are good in one or two things but terrible in most of the other areas of lives.
In the Gospel today, we hear the story of Peter and other disciples who want to embrace the glory and victory of Christ, but it was for hard for them to accept the reality of Christ as the suffering Messiah. Jesus says “Pay attention to what I am telling you.” Jesus’ instruction means that we must accept our reality as a suffering creature and that there is a call for us to bear the suffering heroically like Christ who died on the cross. But, we know that most of the disciples run away when Jesus was arrested. This is not a surprise because we all know that, in some sense, due to our limitations and weakness, we are doomed to fail in imitating Christ as the suffering Messiah. At the very least, we can be honest with ourselves that we are losers in the midst of weakness. And yet, we are joined by the one who experiences and carries that suffering with us. Hence, Jesus is present in all of our suffering, tragedy, and failure, through the consolation of God’s compassionate love.
In your prayer today, reflect on whether God might be working through you to meet people who are considered losers or in some kind of need in the midst of their suffering. Perhaps you can offer yourself to God to be His instrument to reach out to those people in need of God’s help.