Sunday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Year of Saint Joseph

Year of the Family "Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love"

In other years: Saint Ailbe (6th century)

Readings of the Day

RB: Ch 2:16-22 Qualities of the Abbot

Mass: Is 50:5-9a; Resp Ps 116; Jm 2:14-18; Mk 8:27-35

I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

MAY I NEVER BOAST EXCEPT IN THE CROSS OF OUR LORD THROUGH WHICH THE WORLD HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED TO ME AND I TO THE WORLD.

(Gospel Versicle, Mass)

There is no denying that some of the Lord's teachings are difficult. We know that some of Jesus' disciples even left Him because His sayings were hard (Jn 6:66), especially when He spoke about eating His flesh and drinking His blood (6:53-58). Jesus also calls us to forgive others, not seven times but seventy-seven times (Mt 18:21-22). Today we are presented with another difficult teaching, namely, when Jesus quite clearly says: Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me (Mk 8:34). Pope Francis put it this way in a 2015 Angelus Address: "To undertake the discipleship of Jesus means to take up your cross-we all have one-to accompany Jesus on His path, an uncomfortable path that is not of success or of fleeting glory, but one which takes us to true freedom, to that which frees us from selfishness and sin." Denying ourselves is uncomfortable. We don't like to be taken out of our comfort zones. As disciples of Jesus though, we are called to carry on, with whatever comes our way, small things and big things and try to keep it all in perspective. We don't carry the crosses of our choice, or as Cardinal Basil Hume said, "We never tailor our own crosses: we don't carve our own crosses to fit our own shoulders: it's always the one that rubs just where it hurts; it's never the cross of my choosing." So whether our crosses come in the form of "misunderstandings, an unearned rebuke, gnawing anxiety, ill-health, fatigue," we make a choice, we decide "whether these are obstacle to happiness or a path leading to it." The choice is ours as we remember what else Jesus tells us today: Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it (Mk 8:35). All said, we don't want to leave Jesus, or with the words of Peter, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (Jn 6:68).

There is no spiritual maturity without the Cross. If you don't meet the Cross sometime in your life you can never be spiritually mature: you remain spiritually a child.

(Cardinal Basil Hume) 

There are so many painful things in the empty monotony and distraction of those times when we are ill. God alone can make of this emptiness, of these little sacrifices and successive privations, a work of redemption for me and for others. Is there no sweetness in being on our Savior's Cross, and so close to Him, obtaining the grace of salvation or conversion for others, for souls that are greatly loved?

(Elisabeth Leseur, Book of Resolutions 1906-1912, in The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur, p. 85)

SAINT AILBE,

SAINT JOSEPH,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: From d's morning walk on Sunshine Lane, West Linn, OR.

© Gertrude Feick 2021