The Embrace of Divine Love

Dear Friend,

In the Gospel this weekend we receive an answer to a question that arose last week, namely, why does Jesus instruct his disciples to tell no one that he is the Christ? Or, why shouldn’t the disciples - right then and there - proclaim that the Messiah has come and it’s Jesus? The answer is such an important one!

It begins with understanding that for the disciples, and for all members of the early Jewish community, “the notion that the coming messiah must suffer and die was a foreign concept.” (Mahri Leonard-Fleckman). It would never have entered their minds that the Messiah would be “humiliated” in this way. Yet Jesus is emphatic in meeting Peter’s resistance: to reject the humility it takes to enter into the fullness of human life – including suffering and death – is a diabolical obstacle to the motivation of the God revealed in Jesus Christ: that the embrace of divine love touch every element of created reality.

Jeremiah in the first reading has inklings of this long before the coming of Jesus. He is “enticed” into a prophetic vocation which pits him against the powerful NO which the world and its leaders pronounce so desperately against the voice of God. In the same way Paul, writing to the Romans, urges his community not to conform themselves to “this age.”  

For his part, St. Francis was devoted to the crib and the cross, which is to say, the fullness of the incarnation. Out of love – to reach us with that love and bring about the communion of all of creation – God takes the initiative with us through Jesus the Christ with the most profound gestures of humility. Am I willing to let that love shape my life? There’s the question!

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm