SCRC CONVENTION CLOSING MASS
SEPTEMBER 3, 2017
ANAHEIM CONVENTION CENTER
Most Reverend Gordon D. Bennett, S. J.
Bishop Emeritus of Mandeville
Matthew 16: 21-27
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
So that we can break open the meaning of today’s gospel, allow me to ask you to visualize the beautiful and inspiring scene that takes place near the end of the play “A Man for All Seasons.” As you may know, this great play is about the life of St. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, who was executed on the orders of King Henry VIII in the 16th century because St. Thomas refused to take an oath which he felt violated his conscience. As he was being led to the Tower of London to be beheaded, someone from the crowd which had gathered tried to give him a potion which would serve as a kind of anesthetic to ease the pain of the sword. St. Thomas refused to drink it and said, instead, to the man: “Dare we for shame enter the kingdom with ease when Our Lord Himself entered with so much pain?”
Sisters and brothers, when we look inside ourselves, we have to admit that we all want to enter the kingdom of God. Don’t we? But unlike St. Thomas More, you and I always want to enter the kingdom with ease – even as we know that our Lord Himself entered it with so much pain.
Our gospel reading today, presents us with a reminder of what we really believe as Christians, a reminder that is both strong and clear. We hear what Jesus, in no uncertain terms, teaches Peter about what it means to be his follower and what it means to think like God. Jesus insists that the gospel he preaches on behalf of the Father, not the gospel you and I would prefer, is ultimately about joy. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about a joy that is superficial or momentary, but it is about a joy that is profound, about a joy that is eternal.
But Jesus is telling Peter, too, that the joy into which Jesus invites us must first pass through a voluntary and deliberate taking up of the cross, and not just once, but every single day. The cross, Jesus insists, has to come before the joy.
This teaching is not easy for us to hear. Like Peter, you and I want to avoid the hard part; you and I want the crown without the cross; we want the smooth road, not the road that has obstacles and potholes. In a sense, then, what we really want is a gospel of Christ without Christ.
Way back in the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi wrote about what he called the seven capital social sins, putting his finger on the habits and the tendencies that modern culture was beginning to value which tempt us to try to avoid life’s pain, by urging us, instead, to a selfishness and a superficiality in living which undermine humanity itself. Gandhi named the last of these seven sins “the religion without sacrifice.”
The religion without sacrifice means that we would prefer a religion that requires nothing from us; we want a religion that comforts and pacifies us, but does not challenge us. We want a religion whose doctrines and traditions we can explain in words but that we don’t have to practice in deeds. This would be a religion that can affirm that the love of God is the greatest commandment but which also allows us to continue to worship the idols of money, power, pleasure, and control. A gospel of Christ without Christ would be a religion in which we could affirm with our lips Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves but which would allow us also to choose whom to include and whom to ignore or to discriminate against.
In so many ways, as we consider how we live our faith, we would have to admit that we prefer an easy religion, a lazy religion, a religion of cheap grace. In other words, we want a gospel of Christ without Christ. That is certainly what it appears Peter wanted. Like us, Peter’s attitude in life, as he shows here, was to avoid pain at any cost, exactly opposite to the gospel into which God invites us through Jesus.
And so Jesus says to us today what he said to Peter: “No, that’s not the way. You have to get behind me. Get behind me: the place of the disciple is behind me. If you want the joy of the kingdom, you have to follow in my steps; keep your eyes on me and I will lead you to joy. But first we will both have to take up the cross, and we will have to take it up willingly, not begrudgingly, and we will have to take it up with faith, with hope, and with love. And we will have to take up that cross every day.”
Sisters and brothers, when we lift up the cross out of love, God’s grace leads us into a new consciousness that is the truest sign that we are thinking like God. Taking up the cross means that we have chosen to live a life that transcends self-interest and self-protection, a life that calls us beyond momentary satisfaction into eternal joy and peace. This is a consciousness that is not natural to us and that can only be realized as an answer to the prayer that we will receive the grace to know Jesus so intimately, to love him so ardently, and to follow him more perfectly that we will become for the world what He is for it.
So, first, then, let us pray for courage, for strength and for endurance. We take up the cross when we don’t let fear or cowardice rule our lives, when we confront evil straight on when it threatens to destroy us, those we love, or even those we don’t know but who are the victims of evil. We take up our cross when there is no daylight between our words and our deeds, when we are committed to living the truth that true love is shown more in deeds than it is in words. We take up the cross whenever we stand up to defend the weakest, the most vulnerable, those who have been disenfranchised by the selfishness or the cruelty of others even as we run the risk of criticism and rejection ourselves.
Secondly, let us pray that we may spread the gospel of Jesus by showing mercy and forgiveness to everyone, to everyone without exception. Applying the medicine of mercy, attempting to reconcile with everyone, will help us heal the divisions in our families, in our church and in our world. Jesus tells us that we take up the cross when we love our enemies, when we pray for those who persecute us. For the true Christian, as Pope Francis tells us, mercy should be rendered “always, everywhere, in every situation, no matter what.” Anything other than giving mercy is a gospel of Christ without Christ.
What Jesus tells Peter in today’s gospel is that the gospel you and I preach is not a religion without sacrifice. Our baptism into Christ is our pledge that we will not attempt to enter the kingdom with ease when our Lord Himself entered with so much pain, and it is also the hopeful assurance that, as we get behind Jesus, He will lead us to eternal life and to the joy that no one, absolutely no one, will be able to take from us.
Amen