Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jan 15 2025

The Cost of Closeness

The prophets often spoke bluntly, whether addressing the people or even God. Take Jeremiah today. He accuses God of seducing and overpowering him, making him speak a word that has led to his ridicule and persecution. He was even thrown down a cistern and left to die because of his preaching! Jeremiah confesses he has no choice in the matter. When he refuses to speak God’s word, he experiences a fire burning in his heart, consuming his very bones.

The cost of drawing near to the living God can take us down a path we would rather not go. Peter saw this coming when Jesus began to speak of the suffering that lay ahead, instead of being the powerful Messiah people had been waiting for, who would cast down their enemies and restore Israel to the glory days of King David. Instead, Jesus spoke about taking up the cross, losing one’s life, or, in Paul’s words to the Romans, becoming “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

God’s plan for us is the transformation and renewal of our minds according to the pattern of God’s Son Jesus. This transformation comes about when we “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice,” seeking to discern and do God’s will as Jesus did. Such self-offering may lead to our following Jesus on the way: finding life by losing it for the sake of others, and coming to know the living God as purifying fire, life-giving water, and nourishing food for our spirit.

Consider/Discuss

Would your reaction to Jesus’ speaking of having to go to Jerusalem be like Peter’s? Why or why not?
Can you apply Paul’s words to your life: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God”?

Responding to the Word

We can pray that we have the strength to respond courageously to Jesus’ call to be willing to lose our life for his sake. We ask to be able to discern in our daily lives the way we can “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.”

Jan 15 2025

The Cost of Closeness

Jeremiah is caught between fidelity to the vocation that is his as God’s prophet and his own natural inclinations. He was called to deliver a message of violence and destruction to his own people. It is his nation that will be racked with violence and that will face destruction, and he recoils from this responsibility. He can no longer endure the burden so he decides never again to speak in God’s name. However, like a roaring fire, the words seem to burn within him. He cannot restrain their fury. He must speak. Jeremiah is indeed a man of sorrows.

Paul appeals to the mercies of God as the basis of his admonition when he asks the Christians of Rome to offer themselves as a living sacrifice. He is calling them to a disciplined life, not a sacrificial death. He insists that they have entered into the final age of fulfillment. Saved through the blood of Christ and filled with the Spirit of God, they are being transformed into Christ. They have put aside the standards of this world in order to take on the standards of Christ and of the reign of God. This is the transformation and renewal of which Paul speaks.

Jesus predicts his own suffering, death, and resurrection and then discusses the need for the disciples to bear their own suffering. The idea of a suffering mes siah did not conform to the expectations of the people, at least not to Peter’s. He rebukes Jesus. Jesus then addresses Peter as Satan, the one who acts as an obstacle to the unfolding of God’s will. Then, turning to the other disciples, Jesus says that those who follow him must, like him, deny themselves any self-interest and self-fulfillment. Those who selfishly save themselves from sufferings lose in the arena of eschatological judgment, while those who unselfishly offer themselves are saved from this judgment. This is what following Jesus means.

Jan 12 2025

Moving On, Even in Pain

My oldest daughter climbed at a young age. At seven months, she didn’t understand caution. So my husband and I scooted on the floor behind her to ensure that she didn’t fall. One day, she climbed up on the coffee table, threw out her arms, and sparkled with a smile. As she tumbled off, Dan caught her. No child of ours would ever get hurt while on our watch!

It is in our nature to safeguard those we love. Going to kindergarten, heading to high school, departing for college—sometimes we’d rather that children just stay little. Animals instinctively protect.

Peter swore to protect Jesus. He was certain that his friend was not going to die. No buddy of his would ever get hurt while on his watch!

But Jesus valued the enduring will of God over Peter’s short-lived preservation. He exclaimed, “You are not thinking as God does!” To die on the cross was something that the Savior had to do, even though it would be agonizing.

Jeremiah was tired of getting into trouble on God’s behalf. Self protectively, he cried out, “Just let me be! Let me hold this message inside—I will not speak it.” But speaking was something he had to do, even though it hurt. The will of God burned like a fire within him.

Children grow up. Spouses die. Friends move. Grandmas go to eternity. We may be tempted to hold our loved ones back, but we cannot save them. Are we being prudently protective or self servingly possessive? To release others is something we have to do, even though it may hurt.

The Lord guards them for eternity; no one will snatch them away. Therefore we relinquish to God our own certainty about how things should go. Sometimes we resist doing that—so did Jeremiah—so did Peter.

Consider/Discuss

Who do you try to protect? How much of his or her future can you truly control? There is a fine line in discernment between trusting God to take care of those we love and chasing after our own ideas of how things should go. Think of a current situation that worries you—what is the most prudent path to take?
The Holy Spirit teaches us to think as God does rather than as human beings do. When does the surrender to the will of God feel almost too hard to bear? How have we experienced the Lord’s grace in carrying that cross?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, you were not happy with Peter for wanting to avoid pain. We too may not want to let go of children or a spouse or friends or others who are close to us. It hurts. We don’t want to be hurt. Create in us a desire to follow you so closely that we are willing to surrender all for the love of you. Burn in our hearts; put fire in our bones, so that we put you first in our lives.

Jan 12 2025

Scripture Study for

Jeremiah has struggled not only with the mission to proclaim God’s word, but also with the way God had gone about practically coercing him into the task from the beginning (1:5). Jeremiah’s attitude comes out most clearly in this famous passage in which he accuses God of “duping” (or “seducing”) him. The prophet feels God has put something over on him, and he has allowed it to happen. The result has been nothing but pain. Yet Jeremiah is unable to simply walk away. God has gotten into Jeremiah’s bones and the call to proclaim God’s word is unrelenting. This is what Jeremiah was born for and there is no walking away from it.

Having concluded that no matter how mysterious are God’s ways, they are for the good of everyone, Paul turns to the response his audience should have to this divine mercy, which is to offer themselves to God. This requires them to reject the tendency of the “old self” (or the “flesh”) to conform to the values and expectations of the world. Having died to sin in Christ, and with the Spirit dwelling within them, they must be re-formed and have their minds, wills, perspectives renewed. Being conformed to Christ means becoming like him, who was devoted to nothing but the will of God, and thus sought always to do what God—not “the age”—considered good, pleasing, and perfect.

Immediately after being proclaimed the rock upon which Jesus will build his church, Peter reveals the limits of his understanding of the Christ. When Jesus announces that he will suffer and be killed, Peter responds according to quite human ways of thinking: The Messiah and Son of God could not possibly suffer and die. Jesus immediately recognizes this reasoning as a satanic temptation to abandon the course and insists that the kingdom of heaven is costly. This is not a new teaching—Jesus has been proclaiming it along. What is new is the realization that the Son of God himself will pay the highest price. As he has previously assured them, the price will be worth it. They will gain the very thing they think they are losing, and more.

Jan 06 2025

Good Advice or Good News?

Sirach’s call to act with humility in our affairs connects nicely with Jesus’ words to take the last place rather than the place of honor in the dining room. Humility scores more points with others than presumption or pride, even with God. But Jesus is offering more than good advice.

Keep in mind that Jesus was at dinner with Pharisees and lawyers, and that he has just finished healing a man with dropsy who was right in front of him, and it was the Sabbath. Jesus could never seem to stop working on the Sabbath, even in front of people “observing him carefully.”

Jesus then tells them a parable, that is, a story with a punch, one that upends the expectations of the listeners. Jesus is proclaiming how things are to be in the kingdom of God—and for those who work to bring about God’s kingdom come about even now. In the Kingdom, the last will be first; in the Kingdom, the least will be honored and feted; in the Kingdom, generosity will replace entitlement.

God’s plan is not to duplicate Mt. Sinai with its gloomy darkness and fearful words, but God’s dinner parties will take place on Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, with angels in festal gathering, and the chosen all shining and joyful. Those in attendance will know they are there because of the blood of the Lamb that won them mercy before the throne of God. We prepare for this by showing generosity now.

Consider/Discuss

Can you hear good news in today’s Gospel, how living in the kingdom can start even now?
How does today’s Gospel shed light on what Sunday Mass is about?

Responding to the Word

Generous God, you have invited us to the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist, where we are nourished and where we learn what it means to live as children of the Kingdom. Thank you for this generous gift. May it continue to shape our lives.