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24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
September 13, 2015
Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J.
“Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and
follow me. For those who wish to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life
for my sake, and that of the gospel, will save it.”
Jesus practiced what he preached – he took up the cross and laid down his life. He
lived out the prophecy of the Suffering Servant that we just heard in the reading
from the prophet Isaiah. Long ago, on Calvary, God called Him to suffer for the sake
of others and because of His great love, He said yes to the invitation.
These past days we have been deluged with stories about the plight of refugees
escaping the violence and hatred of the Middle East. In our time, many are called to
take up the cross, and to follow Christ as contemporary martyrs who lay down their
lives.
Take Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt who decided to remain with Christ crucified in
the suffering people of Syria. He wrote, "I don't see Muslims or Christians. I see,
above all, human beings. If the Syrian people suffer now, I too can share their pain.”
He chose to minister to the remaining Muslim families and the 25 remaining
Christians unable to leave the city of Homs. He was dragged out of his house into the
street and shot in the head by ISIS on April 7, 2014.
Consider Kayla Meuller, who was imprisoned and killed by ISIS last February. She
joined a long line of devout Christian women who suffered at the hands of the
enemy simply because of their faith. She put herself in harm’s way to protect young
girls being trafficked as sex slaves for ISIS overlords. Meuller’s mother explained,
“Kayla tried to protect these young girls. She was like a mother figure to them.”
Before her death, Mueller wrote to her family, “I remember mom always telling me
that, all in all, in the end, the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place
to experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our
creator because literally there was no else. By God and by your prayers I have felt
tenderly cradled while in free fall.”
“Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and
follow me. For those who wish to save their lives will lose it, but those who lose their
life for my sake, and that of the gospel, will save it.”
These past few weeks we have been hearing the Epistle of James at Sunday mass.
The overarching theme of his letter comes down to this – you can’t just talk the talk,
you’ve got to walk the walk. In today’s reading James asks the rhetorical question,
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he or she has faith but
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does not have works?” St. Ignatius echoed this theme when, at the end of the
Spiritual Exercises, he wrote that love is shown more in deeds than in words. It is
important to remember and honor Kayla Meuller, Frans van der Lugt and others like
them who have laid down their lives in love for others, and to ask for the strength
and courage to imitate them. They are extraordinary examples of faith manifested
in works, extraordinary examples of love shown in deeds. Extraordinary examples
indeed.
But what of the ordinary examples, those who put faith into action in the everyday,
those who take up the cross in circumstances that are familiar to us? They too lay
down their lives. Children who forego security and luxury to insure that elderly
parents are cared for with dignity; parents who sacrifice their well-being to provide
an education for their daughters and sons; women and men who spend hours
laboring tirelessly for the poor and the abandoned on our streets; people who
willingly accept physical suffering to provide an organ for someone in need; first
responders who laid down their lives for others on 9/11 and continue to do so
everyday; people who open their homes and hearts to refugees at the expense of
their own comfort; monastic women and men who forego the pleasures of this
world to pray for all of us; people of modest means who give material comfort to
others not out of their abundance, but out of their poverty. And on this September
13, which happens to be Grandparents’ Day, think of people like Phyllis Bingham, a
woman who took in a total of twenty-five foster grandchildren, including babies
going through drug withdrawals, in addition to raising four grandchildren of her
own. I am sure that each of you could add to the list. And I am sure that each of you,
perhaps too humble to admit it, would be on that list too.
“Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and
follow me. For those who wish to save their lives will lose it, but those who lose their
life for my sake, and that of the gospel, will save it.”
Today, let us ponder the great paradox of Christian life, one that is far from the
norms and values of so much of our culture: It is in emptying ourselves that we are
filled; it is in suffering for others’ sake that we find joy; it is in placing ourselves in
harm’s way that we find peace; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in giving
that we receive; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.