TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

MASS READINGS:

Gospel Mt 16:21-27

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, "God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you." He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." Then 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 all according to his conduct."

REFLECTION

If there is ever an example of an understatement, it is the phrase, “suffer greatly.” The extent of Jesus’ suffering surpassed “greatly.” There has not been, nor will there ever be a word to convey the scope of the suffering Jesus went through. The width, length, and depth of all languages (the original and the translated languages) do not contain a word sufficient to capture the monstrousness, the heinousness, and the atrociousness of the prolonged torture Jesus endured. It was a death like no other. Several saints refused to be tortured in any manner close to how Jesus died. They perceived themselves as unworthy. We are not worthy to suffer or to die like Christ in a death like His.