Dear Folks,

God does some strange stuff.  Consider some of the animals He made. Consider what else He does. 

Thirty-nine years ago, I was ordained a priest on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. The next day, of course, I celebrated my first Mass, and being a Sunday, I used the readings of the day, and the first reading was this one from Jeremiah, “You duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped.” I therefore learned a very important prayer:” I suppose You think this is very funny.”  I had also learned of a famous prayer of St. Teresa of Avila: “If this is the way you treat you friends, it’s no wonder that you have so few of them.” 

God is, of course, infinitely smarter than we are, so it should not be surprising that many of the things He does make no sense to us at the moment.

Peter was doing so well last week in the Gospel reading. For us it had been a week, for him just a moment. He went from “blessed are you Simon bar-Jonah” to “Get behind me Satan.”  That had to have been a shock. He just said that Jesus shouldn’t be rejected and killed, which, under normal circumstances, would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to say. 

We are so used to the cross being associated with Christianity that it is easy to forget what a shock and a “stumbling block (1Corinthians 1:22-24)” it was to people at that time. Peter would eventually come to accept it, to the point of giving his life for the faith. But let’s take a moment and consider his journey to getting there. But consider that it was completely contrary to everything that had made sense for them. 

Now think about how it can work it in our lives. We so often go through the words, but it is a completely different thing to accept it in reality. There was a time when I was getting attacked for doing my job, and a friend said to remember blessed are those who are persecuted. My first thought was “very funny” then I realized that This was actually a bit of truth. If we stand for something, we are going to get clobbered, if not physically, then psychologically. We do Jesus’ work, often not through our strength, but through our weakness. We often win by losing. It may be a small thing compared to what the martyrs faced, but Jesus taught that little things matter (Mark 12:41-44). 

St. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” When have we served God, not through our strength, but through our weakness. When did our plans get turned upside down. How might God use our weakness?

Blessings,

Fr. Jim