Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Optional Memorial of Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs
If the miracle of yesterday’s confession of faith was seeing the truth of Christ in the ordinary, today the Lord reminds something even more confusing: his glory will be revealed in his death and suffering, becoming the object of human control and scorn. We should not be surprised that his disciples do not understand, but we sometimes are. It’s all old hat for us, after all, that the crucified one is the same as the exalted one, the man of sorrows is the man of joy.
I wonder whether that is not just desensitization, though, the result of centuries of crucifixes hanging on the walls. It’s hard—impossible, actually—for the disciples to understand because they know what it would mean. It means that not only God has become human but also the lowest of the low (nothing lower is there than crucifixion). The omnipotent one tells them he is impotent, and we expect comprehension?
Perhaps we are the ones who don’t get it. It is often true that contemplating Jesus’ passion and death repels us. We can’t enter into it. We go on too soon to more pleasant things. Moreover, I might understand that Jesus is God and he suffered, but that rarely translates to an embrace of suffering, seeing it as what it is, a privileged avenue to union with God, sanctified by the Lord.
I think we would do well to ask for the confusion of the disciples, which in fact is rooted in an affirmation of the eternal glory of God and his one Christ.