Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

How am I doing?  This is a question we often ask during our lives, sometimes openly and often unconsciously.  We look for external markers of growth and development, feedback that tells us if we are going in the right direction.  Are we meeting expectations?  We need objective measures to tell us if we are measuring up.  We carry in our minds and hearts the voices and examples of parents, teachers, admired models of successful living.  They are our real community, giving or withholding approval. They are the voices of real authority in our lives, nurturing and cultivating growth from within.  They are the audience for our behavior. 

In Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons, an unsavory character named Richard Rich is trying to get a position from Thomas More.  More tells him: Go and be a teacher.  Rich answers, But who will know it? More says: your pupils will know it, your friends will know it, God will know it. That’s a pretty good audience. How we are being heard, accepted and received is of vital importance. We can select an audience that sets a pretty low bar and expects very little.  And then we become little in the process.  Or we can become a geyser of emotions and passions, accepting no limits or boundaries to the exercise of our will.  Our passions make war in our members, and without self-possession we are unable to possess. You covet, but do not possess. The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.  How am I doing? is a more crucial question than What am I doing?

The gospels present Jesus as constantly engaged in a process of teaching, a process he continues with us today.  His prediction of his passion is integral to an understanding of what discipleship in God’s kingdom means.  It is an assault  on every system of self-preservation, self-protection, self-care and esteem that seem so necessary for human flourishing.  It is hard to unlearn these patterns and hear the new teaching.  That the disciples were stunned, silent, and afraid to question him is no surprise.  They were at least honest in admitting their incomprehension.  Silence is more appropriate than running in with soothing explanations and theodicies to numb real questions and pain.  The paschal mystery of Christ crosses the boundaries between life and death.  Life is transformed at its depths, not just at its end.  It puts the question How am I doing? before a new audience and in a new context.  Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for according to his  own words, God will take care of him.   How can God be known as caring when disaster erupts?  Disciples must learn how to bear the convergence of suffering and God’s care which move them into the pattern of Christ’s mystery of redemption.  Our question is finally addressed to him and we wait for his answer. How am I doing?

When Jesus places the child at the center of his new community, he undermines all forms of reliance on systems of control, domination, or superiority.  His community is a community of service, of responding to need.  It is one that knows the vulnerability, the unprotected and open responsiveness of those who rely on God’s care.  It possesses the beginner’s mind for which everything is possible. It dares to identify and recognize its own soul in that of the child and feel the embrace of the Lord.