Daily Gospel Reflection - Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Bishop Robert Barron
August 4, 2022
Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mt 16:24-28
Jesus said to his disciples,
“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.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay each according to his conduct.
Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here
who will not taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in our Gospel for today, Jesus outlines the cost of becoming his disciple: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” We have a very antiseptic view of the cross, for we have seen it for so long as a religious symbol.
But for the first nine centuries or so of the Christian dispensation, artists didn’t depict the cross, for it was just too brutal. Say what you want about the violence in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ—it probably came as close as any work of art to showing the reality of a Roman crucifixion.
But here’s the point: We are meant to see on that cross not simply a violent display but rather our own ugliness. What brought Jesus to the cross? Stupidity, anger, mistrust, institutional injustice, betrayal of friends, denial, unspeakable cruelty, scapegoating, and fear. In other words, all of our dysfunction is revealed on that cross. In the light of the cross, no one can say the popular philosophy of our times, “I’m okay and you’re okay.” This is why we speak of the cross as God’s judgment on the world.
COMMENTS