(Isaiah 50:4c-9, James 2:14-18, Mark 8:27-35)
The Lord God is my help.
Will I take up my cross and follow him?
Would you agree, my friends, that we have heard some beautiful but tough scriptural readings in today’s liturgy? Today’s theme word can be sustain, which leads us to think of this phrase: “to hold up from underneath”. I think of “to hold up the person so he can keep going.” A trainer does this for a boxer in the middle of a fight. Ice skaters and dancers delight us by up-holding each other with balance and grace, after their many hours of practice and, I imagine, a few falls. God does this for us, too … maybe after a few falls.
God’s faithful servant in Isaiah stands his ground staunchly and depends on the Lord to sustain him. The phrase “I have set my face like flint” projects a firm determination, provided by the Lord, who supports us through the worst times. “See, the Lord God is my help.” David humbly depends on our good and strong Lord (Psalm 116): “I love the Lord because he has heard my voice in supplication.” The whole Psalm 116 is worth pondering; it leads me to thank and praise my own ever-faithful, never-failing Support, who is a Person called Love.
Now the theme turns toward me.
Saint James bluntly tells all of us followers of Jesus that we need to support our faith with our good works. He tells us to “give them” the sustenance they need to keep going. Some people lack necessities. Do I lack the necessity of charity? Not since my Baptism, if I haven’t rejected it. However, at the very center of my strength to sustain others is Jesus in the Eucharist. By adoring Him and receiving Him, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, my charity increases, and I can always ask for more. The saints did. We want to set our sights high, and higher, lifted on the wings of our desire, to love others as God loves us.
Later in the Gospel, Jesus reminds “the crowd with his disciples [which includes us], to take up our cross” and follow him. To take up and sustain the cross of doing good deeds is the burden of each of us as followers of Jesus.
A few years ago, a family man in another state, where people are allowed to solicit at the side of the road, shared his doubts about what someone would do with his donation. In spite of this, he decided to help a needy man, handed him something, and heard a “Thank you.” Glancing at his mirror, suddenly he saw the man crumpled over, apparently collapsed on the sidewalk! Concerned, he turned his vehicle around, and called out to the man, who grinned at him and responded, “I was just kneeling to thank God that I will be able to eat today.”
Jesus doesn’t guarantee gratitude in this life, but Scripture says that He is not outdone in generosity. Later on, that man, with his wife and several children, enjoyed the surprise of winning a brand-new car in a parish raffle! God doesn’t promise material rewards in this life, but sometimes He surprises us!
Let us sustain others as the Lord sustains us! Gratitude leads to love.
and then