12th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: Luke 9:18-24

18 One day when Jesus was praying alone in the presence of his disci­ples, he put this question to them, 'Who do the crowds say lam?'
19 And they answered, 'John the Baptist; others Elijah; and others say one of the ancient prophets come back to life’
20 'But you’ he said, 'who do you say lam?' It was Peter who spoke up. 'The Christ of God’ he said.
21 But he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone anything about this.
22 The Son of Man’ he said, 'is destined to suffer grievously, to be re­jected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day’
23 Then to all he said, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.
24 For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it’

Meditation

Today's gospel reading is clearly divided into sections. In your meditation, start with one alone, although you may eventually find a connection between the different sections.

In verses 18 to 21 Jesus puts to his disciples the deepest and most sacred question that we can ask one another: 'Who do you say I am?' Identify with Jesus doing the asking, or with the disciples being asked. You can then concentrate either on the content of Peter's answer or on the way Jesus asked the question, e.g. why did he ask it the way he did, or why at this particular mo­ment of his life.

In verse 22 Jesus says clearly that he knows the difficulties that his chosen path will bring him, and at the same time he is confident that he will eventually be victorious.

In verses 23 and 24 we have two of the most famous sayings of Jesus. In meditating on such paradoxical sayings, you must let yourself make a journey into the paradox, identifying with each part of the saying, and feeling that they are contradictory, but eventually discovering that they are not really so, and in the process entering into a new insight that touches you deeply. You might also ask yourself why is Jesus giving that kind of teaching today, to you personally or to the world.

Prayer 

Lord, people today think they can know themselves through objective tests
that can be bought in a store and 'administered' by strangers.
But, as Jesus taught us, the question 'Who am I?' is a sacred one.

Others can help us only if they have walked with us for years, if we have been alone with them for long hours and they have prayed with us.
And when they have helped us it will be something so personal that we will not want them to tell anyone about it.

Lord, we remember with gratitude a retreat we made with some companions.
We remember how after those days we knew them so much better, partly because we had shared deeply, but more from the mere fact that they had prayed alone in our presence.

Before that retreat, we - like 'the crowds' - had put them into categories according to their age, race or social class, or as other people we had known
who had come back to life in them.

Now we looked on them with reverence, seeing them as unique individuals,
your own specially anointed ones.

Lord, forgive us that we want to be known as 'prophets' or 'the presence of God in the world' or 'light of the world'.

Teach us to be humble like Jesus, so that when people give us these titles
we will give them strict orders not to tell anyone anything about this.

'There is no way on this earth that you can say yes to human dignity
and know that you will be spared any kind of sacrifice.'
Cesar Chavez

Lord, once we give ourselves to a noble cause there comes a time as it did for Jesus when we know for certain that we are destined to suffer grievously, that we will be rejected by people who have been our teachers,
and others whom we looked upon as holy and learned, and that we will be defeated many times.

But deep down within us we know too that we will always start again.

'In Caribbean politics, the moon is promised by politicians, and democ­racy consists in making a choice between competing sets of promises which are dangled temptingly every four or five years.'
Michael Manley

Lord, we pray for our political leaders, that they may be more like Jesus, that they will respect us sufficiently to tell us honestly that we must renounce our natural desire for easy solutions to our problems, and that we must take up every day the burden of solving these problems from our own resources.

But of course they must also be like Jesus in setting the example by doing this themselves.

Lord, it is one of the marks of Western civilisation today that we need to be superior to others in order to establish our identity:
- men humiliate women to prove their masculinity;
- nations arm themselves to the teeth to gain the respect of other nations;
- as a church, we prove others false so that we can call our­selves true.

Send us teachers like Jesus to remind us that we can never find our true vocation by concentrating on ourselves, but if we serve others after his example you can lead us to our true selves.

'If today's flourishing civilisations remain selfishly wrapped up r: themselves, they could easily place their highest values in jeopardy, sac­rificing their will to be great to the desire to possess more.'
Pope Paul VI

Lord, we thank you that the popes are reaching nations with the message of Jesus that if they want to save their true greatness they must be willing to give up some of their power and security.