Christ's Charge to Peter,
Pieter Paul Rubens, 1616

Readings:
Jeremiah 20:7-9
Psalm 63:2-6, 8-9
Romans 12:1-2
Matthew 16:21-27

Chants

This Sunday’s First Reading catches the prophet Jeremiah in a moment of weakness. His intimate lamentation contains some of the strongest language of doubt found in the Bible. Following God’s call, he feels abandoned. Preaching His Word has brought him only derision.

But God does not deceive—and Jeremiah knows this. He tests the just (see Jeremiah 20:11-12), and disciplines His children through their sufferings and trials (see Hebrews 12:5-7).

What Jeremiah learns, Jesus states explicitly in this week’s Gospel. To follow Him is to take up a cross, to deny yourself—your priorities, preferences, and comforts.

It is to be willing to give it all up, even life itself, for the sake of His gospel. As Paul says in the Epistle, we have to join ourselves to the passion of Christ, to offer our bodies—our whole beings—as living sacrifices to God.

By His cross, Jesus has shown us what Israel’s sacrifices of animals were meant to teach—that we owe to God all that we have.

God’s kindness is a greater good than life itself, as we sing in Sunday’s Psalm. The only thanks we can offer is our spiritual worship—to give our lives to the service of His will (see Hebrews 10:3-11; Psalm 50:14,23).

Peter doesn’t yet get this in the Gospel. As it was for Jeremiah, the cross is a stumbling block for Peter (see 1 Corinthians 1:23). This too is our natural temptation—to refuse to believe that our sufferings play a necessary part in God’s plan.

That’s how people think, Jesus tells us this week. But we are called to the renewal of our minds—to think as God thinks, to will what He wills.

In the Mass, we once again offer ourselves as perfect and pleasing sacrifices of praise (see Hebrews 13:15). We bless Him as we live, confident that we will find our lives in losing them, that with the riches of His banquet, our souls will be satisfied.

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St. Caesarius of Arles
from Sermon 159 (CCL 104, 650)

Human sin made the road rough but Christ's resurrection leveled it; by passing over it himself he transformed the narrowest of tracks into a royal highway. Two feet are needed to run along this highway; they are humility and charity. Everyone wants to get to the top - well, the first step to take is humility. Why take strides that are too big for you - do you want to fall instead of going up? Begin with the first step, humility, and you will already be climbing.

As well as telling us to renounce ourselves, our Lord and Savior said that we must take up our cross and follow him. What does it mean to take up one's cross? Bearing every annoyance patiently. That is following Christ. When someone begins to follow his way of life and his commandments, that person will meet resistance on every side. He or she will be opposed, mocked, even persecuted, and this not only by unbelievers but also by people who to all appearances belong to the body of Christ...

If you want to follow Christ, then, take up his cross without delay. Endure injuries, do not be overcome by them... "If anyone wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me." We must strive with God's help to do as the Apostle Paul says: "As long as we have food and clothing, let this content us". Otherwise, if we seek more material goods than we need and desire to become rich, we may «fall prey to temptation.» The devil may trick us into wanting the "many useless and harmful things that plunge people into ruin and destruction" (1Tim 6,8-9). May we be free from this temptation through the protection of our Lord.

Pope Benedict XVI
from Angelus Address, August 31, 2008

Today too, the Apostle Peter, like last Sunday, appears in the foreground of the Gospel. However, whereas last Sunday we admired him for his forthright faith in Jesus, whom he proclaimed the Messiah and Son of God, this time, in the episode that immediately follows, he shows a faith that is still immature and too closely bound to the mentality of "this world" (cf. Rm 12: 2).

Indeed, when Jesus begins to speak openly of the fate that awaits him in Jerusalem, in other words that he will have to suffer many things and be killed in order subsequently to be raised, Peter protests saying: "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you" (Mt 16: 22). It is obvious that the Teacher and the disciple follow two opposite ways of thinking. Peter, in accordance with a human logic, is convinced that God would never permit his Son to end his mission by dying on the Cross.

Jesus, on the contrary, knows that in his immense love for mankind the Father sent him to give his life for them and that if this should involve the Passion and the Cross, it is right that it should happen in this manner. Moreover he knows that the last word will be the Resurrection. Although Peter's protest was spoken in good faith and for sincere love of the Master, to Jesus it sounds like a temptation, an invitation to save himself, whereas it is only by losing his life that he will receive new and eternal life for us all.

If, to save us, the Son of God had to suffer and die on the Cross, it was certainly not by a cruel design of the heavenly Father. The reason is the gravity of the illness from which he came to heal us: it was such a serious, mortal disease that it required all his Blood.

Indeed, it was with his death and Resurrection that Jesus defeated sin and death and re-established God's lordship. Yet the battle is not over. Evil exists and resists in every generation, as we know, in our day too. What are the horrors of war, violence to the innocent, the wretchedness and injustice unleashed against the weak other than the opposition of evil to the Kingdom of God? And how is it possible to respond to so much wickedness except with the unarmed and disarming power of love that conquers hatred and of life that has no fear of death? It is the same mysterious power that Jesus used, at the cost of being misunderstood and abandoned by many of his own.

Dear brothers and sisters, in order to bring the work of salvation fully to completion, the Redeemer continues to associate to himself and his mission men and women who are prepared to take up their cross and follow him. Consequently, just as for Christ carrying the cross was not an option but a mission to be embraced for love, so it is for Christians too.

In our world today, where the forces that divide and destroy seem to dominate, Christ does not cease to offer to all his clear invitation: anyone who wants to be my disciple must renounce his own selfishness and carry the cross with me. Let us invoke the help of the Blessed Virgin who followed Jesus first and to the very end on the way of the Cross. May she help us to walk in the Lord's footsteps with determination, to experience from this moment, even in trial, the glory of the Resurrection.

Pope Benedict XVI
from Angelus Address, August 28, 2011

In today's Gospel, Jesus explains to his disciples that he must "go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Matthew 16:21). Everything seems to be turned upside down in the heart of the disciples! How is it possible that "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (verse 16), can suffer to the point of death?

The Apostle Peter rebels, he does not accept this, so he spoke up and said to the Master: "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you" (verse 22). What appears evident is the difference between the loving design of the Father, which goes so far as the gift of his only-begotten Son on the cross to save humanity, and the expectations, the desires, the plans of the disciples.

And this discord occurs also today: when the fulfillment of one's life is directed solely to social success, to physical and economic wellbeing, then one no longer reasons according to God, but according to men (verse 23). To think according to the world is to put God aside, not to accept his plan of love, almost impeding the fulfillment of his wise will. Because of this, Jesus says something particularly harsh to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me" (ibid.).

The Lord shows that "the path of the disciples is to follow him, the Crucified. In all three Gospels, however, he explains this following in the sign of the cross ... as the way to 'lose oneself,' which is necessary for man and without which it is not possible for him to find himself" (Gesù di Nazaret, Milan 2007, 333 [cf. Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 287]).

As with the disciples, Jesus also addresses the invitation to us. "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). A Christian follows Christ when he accepts his cross with love, which in the eyes of the world seems a defeat and a "loss of life" (cf. verses 25-26).

But the Christian knows that he does not carry the cross alone but with Jesus, sharing in his way of donation. The Servant of God Paul VI wrote: "In a mysterious way, Christ Himself accepts death ... on the cross, in order to eradicate from man's heart the sins of self-sufficiency and to manifest to the Father a complete filial obedience" (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete in Domino).

By willingly accepting the cross, Jesus carries the cross of all men and becomes the source of salvation for the whole of humanity. St. Cyril of Alexandria comments: "The victorious cross has illumined him who was blinded by ignorance, has released him who was a prisoner of sin, has brought redemption to the whole of humanity" (Catechesis Illuminandorum XIII, 1: de Christo crucifixo et sepulto: PG 33, 772 B).

We entrust our prayer to the Virgin Mary and to St. Augustine, whose memorial is today, so that each one of us will be able to follow the Lord on the way of the cross and allow ourselves to be transformed by divine grace, renewing our way of thinking, so that we "may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2).