22nd Sunday 2014 Robert VerEecke, S.J. Have you been to Calvary? The film, that is. If you haven’t been to “Calvary”, you may heard about it. It begins with a priest hearing the confession of someone who was horrifically abused by a priest when he was a child. He carries with him the pain and the shame of this abuse and betrayal by someone he trusted and now only desires to exact revenge. But since he was an innocent child when his life was destroyed, he must destroy the life of an innocent priest to exact justice. Cinematically, the film is at times breathtaking with its shots of the cliffs and the ocean. Humanly, the film is also breath-taking. It takes your breath away as you feel suffocated by the anger and rage, the sheer misery of life in this Irish seaside town. Although we do not hear the inner dialogue of the innocent priest with God, you can imagine that it might echo that of Jeremiah: “You duped me and I let myself be duped.” Father James is a “late comer” to the priesthood. He is a widower who felt the call to the priesthood after his wife died. Even before hearing the confession that will lead him to Calvary, he must have asked God, “Why?”… “Why did you call me to this life”? Like Jeremiah he is the object of mockery and derision by almost every character that populates his parish. There is so much anger against the church for its repressive control over the Irish people for so long that James, this priest who does the work of the Church, is scorned and demeaned. But he persists in his ministry as he tries to heal wounds and call people to conversion of heart. In addition to the daily fare of scorn, derision and distrust, there is the impending Calvary, the threat of his death at the hand of someone whose voice he must have recognized. And perhaps he asked himself, or God, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? And what about you? Have you ever said to God: you duped me? How did I get into this mess? What did I do to deserve this? And what was God’s response? Do you have an Honest-to God relationship that allows you to share your deepest frustration, confusion and disappointments with God? The Gospel speaks of another Calvary, the impending threat of the death of another innocent, Jesus himself. His prediction of his death, his Calvary, is rejected by Peter. What a change from last week’s gospel! In last week’s Gospel, Peter was praised for having the correct answer to the question, who do you say that I am? He must have been so proud of himself, inflated with a sense of being chosen. Jesus himself tells him he is divinely inspired: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my heavenly Father”. But now, with his inflated self and know-it-all attitude, he feels confident enough to rebuke Jesus. And in response he is called “Satan”, “tempter”. Can you imagine the look on Peter’s face hearing those words? Does crestfallen describe him? Do the words, “Geez, what did I do to deserve that?”, capture what he may have been thinking? Once again, Peter does not really know what he is saying. He does not yet know the cost of following Jesus. It will take the Cross and the Resurrection before Peter begins to understand what Jesus is asking from him. And what is Jesus asking from Peter and from us? Simply an unconditional surrender to the mystery of life lived with its pain, its struggle, its confusion, and, oh yes, it’s Joy. It’s what we call Passion. What Jeremiah, Jesus and James share in common is Passion. It is not just the passion, i.e., the suffering that each one experiences. It is also a passion for God and the “word of God”, the “kingdom of God”, the “Mercy of God”. You hear it in the words of Jeremiah: I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; You see it in Father James and his choice not to run away but to encounter his accuser face-to-face. And of course you see it in Jesus on the Cross in the first Calvary. When I began to think about preaching the Word tonight, I was searching for the easy way out. It’s been such a beautiful summer and an early labor day reminds us that everything begins again in earnest. I was hoping that I could find words that would be as comforting as those cool summer breezes, as delightful as a dip in the ocean, as light-filled as those long summer days… but instead I found myself in Calvary. Huh? What did I just say? I found myself in Calvary. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.