Friday in the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I
Feast of St Claire of Assisi
Deut 4,32-40; Ps77; Mt 16,24-28
It is amazing how nature does all it can in order to survive. Plants spread their roots deep and wide to absorb all the water and nutrients they need, and the stems and leaves adjust themselves to receive optimal sunlight while avoiding the risk of over exposure to heat. Animals too go at lengths to hunt their prey and through evolution developed all sorts of methods to avoid giving themselves up to their predators too easily.
As human beings created in the image and likeness of God, we too have in us this strong desire and power to survive. Well, not merely to survive, much more than that: to live in eternity with God. Jesus tells us over and over again: I have come so that you may have life and life in abundance; Whoever believes in me will live forever, whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life...
In today's readings we are given further tools that will help us attain this eternal life, which, after all is what we have been created for.
The first tool is found in the first reading: remembrance. To remember, at least in biblical language is not merely to think of something. It is to make present again and therefore implies action. The word re-member too suggests "to put together once again" as much as the Latin word "recordor, recordari, recordatus," which suggests putting again in one's heart. When the "good thief" asks Jesus to remember him when he is in his Kingdom, he is not simply asking him to think of him in heaven - he wants him to do something! And when Jesus in the last supper says, "do this in memory of me, he wants us to do something." God asks his People to remember how God has acted with them and with their forefathers, and with the psalmist we prayed, "I remember the deeds of the Lord." What action, therefore, am I asked to take as I remember the deeds of the Lord in my life? How am I going to respond with the talents, resources and experiences that I have received in my life? Could they have been a preparation for a particular mission in my daily life?
The second tool is found in the Gospel, which is a challenging text: Jesus says, "deny yourself, carry your cross and follow me." Rather than taking these words as a burden and as a price we have to pay in order to win eternal life, let us look at them something that Jesus is sharing with us. The cross is not negative thing that happens to us, but it is the cross that Jesus has carried for us. To deny ourselves, to take up our cross and to follow Jesus is our very Christian life, our following of Christ, and our placing Christ at the centre of everything that we do.
This is exactly what St Claire did when she renounced her nobility escaped from her home one night to join St Francis and his companions in a barn in Porziuncola, where she had her beautiful hair cut and where she put on her penitential habit. It was her way of remembering how God has walked with her in her life and her way of expressing her desire to deny herself, take up her cross and follow Jesus.
How are you an I going to do this in our daily life? Can I think of one instance when God has walked with me? How do I feel urged to respond to it? What concrete steps must I take to reaffirm my desire to bind myself more closely to Jesus in the way that I live my Christian life?
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