Learning from Christ How to Save Our Life Through Losing It, 18th Friday (I), August 7, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Sixtus II, Pope, Martyr, and Companions
August 7, 2015
Deut 4:32-40, Ps 77, Mt 16:13-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In order to understand the full meaning of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel for Friday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time, we need to understand it in the context of what happened immediately before it and after it. After it was the scene of the Transfiguration, which we considered yesterday by a coincidence in the Church’s liturgical calendar. Before it was the previous part of the scene in Caesarea Philippi, in which Peter, helped by God the Father, confessed that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God, and Christ confessed Simon bar-Jonah to be the rock (Peter) on whom he was building his Church. Because of yesterday’s feast, we combine what would have been the Gospel for Thursday of the 18th Week with today as the Church encourages so that we can appreciate far more the full context.
• There is a profound connection between the dialogue in Caesarea between Jesus and the disciples and on the Mount of Transfiguration between God the Father and three of those disciples. Jesus asks who the crowds say he is, and then who his disciples say he is, but God the Father gives the definitive answer during the Transfiguration: “This is my son, my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.” And because God the Father knew that the apostles were not listening to Jesus well in his mentioning that he would be a suffering Messiah and the icon of the God whom creatures seek to kill through sin, God the Father spoke from the cloud and said, “Listen to him!”
• St. Peter refused to listen to Jesus’ words that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” He hold him, “No such thing shall ever happen to you!” And Jesus rebuked him in return, changing his name a second time and calling the new rock “Satan,” for trying to divert him from doing God’s will. Jesus’ command in response, “Get behind me!,” is very relevant to what comes later, because Peter was trying to lead the Son of God rather than listen to him as his disciple. Jesus told him that he was thinking not as God does but as human beings do.
• But as shocking as hearing about Jesus’ suffering was, something would be even more challenging. Jesus said that if we wished to reign with him, if we wished to be part of his messianic reign, we needed to be united to him in giving their life to save it and to save others. The disciples needed to listen to this as well: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” These were not arbitrary criteria to be a follower of Jesus. They were essential. In order to be his disciple, in order to become like him, we need to deny ourselves in order to prioritize and affirm God and others. In order to be his disciple, we essentially need to die to ourselves each day — that’s what the Cross makes possible — so that we might come alive with Christ and help him enliven others. If we seek to maintain our life in this world, to avoid the suffering associated with love, then we will never be like Christ. We would be thinking not as God does but as man does.
• Most of us may not need actually to be crucified with Christ, but we need to be willing should it come to it. And the practice for that supreme moment happens in day to day life. That’s what we ponder in today’s first reading. For God, Moses says to the Israelites, “You must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God. …  You must keep his statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today, that you and your children after you may prosper.” It’s through keeping the commandments that we learn to deny ourselves as God and acknowledge God as God, honor his name, keep holy the Sabbath. It’s through keeping the commandments that we die to our desire for control over others, to take advantage of them, to profit from them, to use them as stepping stones for our advancement. We cannot possibly love others if we don’t reverence our parents, if we’re hating or hurting others, if we’re taking advantage of them for our own gratification, if we’re stealing from them, deceiving them, or envious at their blessings. Dying to the Old Adam in us is essential to allowing the New Adam to live and reign and the commandments allow us to put God first and others second. This fidelity to God and love for others in the daily life of the commandments is the way we train to be faithful in the supreme hour.
• But sometimes the Lord does require us to give all as he gave for us. Today we celebrate the feast of Pope St. Sixtus II and his four deacon companions, who were captured and killed during Mass in the Catacombs of St. Praetextatus on August 6, 258. Two other deacons were killed that day elsewhere. And the last of the seven deacons of Rome, St. Lawrence, was killed on August 10, as we’ll be celebrating on Monday. Even though they knew of the decree of the emperor Valerian preventing their assemblies, they still got together to celebrate, choosing to risk their physical lives to receive their spiritual nourishment rather than save their physical lives and go without the nourishment for their souls. Weeks after their martyrdom, once he got the details of what happened, St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote a beautiful tribute to them and he focused on something very important. He said they thought far more of eternal life than their death, far less about being killed than being crowned. We need to fill our minds with these same thoughts in order to think like God does, rather than man does. When we think of God, of eternal life, of God’s blessings rather than about self-denial and the Cross, when we consider how much we will receive from God than what we’ll give up, when we think about our life more than about our death, then we can more easily be courageous every day and on the Supreme Day.
• St. Sixtus and his companions were willing to risk their lives to attend Mass, because it’s here where Jesus makes us strong, by uniting ourselves to his own self-denial, his own way of the Cross, his own crucifixion and his own risen life, to strengthen us to do the same. As we prayed at the beginning of Mass today, “Almighty God, make us docile in believing the faith and courageous in confessing it, just as you granted St. Sixtus and his companions that they might lay down their lives for the sake of your word and in witness to Jesus.” That’s a prayer God wants to answer today and every day!

The readings for today’s Mass were: