by SUNDA Y

by Joan Mitchell, CSJ August 30, 2020, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Vol. 29, No. 48

lace an open and lighted candle P at the center of your group. Surround it with the most hopeful headlines you find in recent newspapers. LEADER: Loving God, we gather in your name to praise practice denial may have sought ow do we imitate Jesus’ you. to identify with Jesus’ suffering self-giving as well as ALL: Our ordinary lives are as have many . Hhis suffering? Most of sacred, holy in your eyes. This saying focuses only us answer day by day over our on the end of Jesus’ life. It lifetimes in our relationships. I LEADER: Let us remember leaves out Jesus’ coming among resist a call to martyrdom. Jesus our hands are your hands in the people to heal the sick, himself resisted the cup in his our world. free the possessed, and reveal prayers in the garden before his ALL: We are holy in your eyes. God’s nearness and love in our arrest. LEADER: You give us the gift midst. Jesus lived his prophetic Archbishop Romero and Dr. of life. mission all his days and faced Martin Luther King, Jr. gave ALL: We are holy in your eyes. the consequences in death at their energies to prophetic Roman hands. preaching and paid the price. LEADER: We welcome your God raised Jesus to new life. Sister Dorothy Stang kept grace and mercy as we share His resurrection calls us to faith hanging her hammock in our faith and our lives today. that new life is always possible— another outpost farther into ALL: We are holy in your eyes. in relationships, in work for the Amazon rain forest as she peace, in sustaining Earth. worked with teams to start faith woman in a recent communities and to keep land class described for poor farmers in . She an upbringing sought justice, not martyrdom. A We give our energies daily to that taught her denial. She learned to choose work and family commitments. the hardest and most Fresh crumbs fall on our floors disgusting tasks and eat every day as we cook, eat, clean, what she didn’t like rather wash. Young parents exhaust than ever pursue what themselves with round-the-clock delighted her. care for a new baby. Spouses Jesus recommends accompany one another denying oneself in through doctors’ appointments, Sunday’s gospel. “Those blood draws, and treatments who want to become my in sickness. Daily we give of followers, let them deny ourselves in loving one another. themselves and take up l What did you learn about how the cross and follow me,” to follow Jesus in your family he says. The parents who upbringing? raised their daughter to Reuters Sister Dorothy Stang

Sunday Readings: 20.7-9, Romans 12.1-2, Matthew 16.21-27 Jerusalem and the seeming contradiction that the messiah must suffer. From Jesus is a messiah the time of Peter’s confession who will suffer. of faith, the narrative anticipates the messiah’s NARRATOR: From that time on, astounding destiny: death on Jesus began to show his disciples a Roman cross. that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at l What is a turning point you the hands of the elders and chief JESUS: Those who want to become have experienced in your life? my followers, let them deny priests and scribes, and be killed, l What led up to the turning themselves and take up their cross and on the third day be raised. point? Peter took him aside and began to and follow me. For those who rebuke him. want to save their lives will lose l From that time on, how did them, and those who lose their your direction change? PETER: God forbid it, Lord! This lives for my sake will find them. must never happen to you. For what will it profit them if they any people in Jesus’ NARRATOR: But Jesus turned and gain the whole world but forfeit time expected said to Peter, their lives? Or what will they give a warrior messiah, in return for their lives? For the M JESUS: Get behind me, Satan! You who would restore Israel to Son of Man is to come with his independence and power. are a stumbling block to me; for angels in the glory of his Father, A messiah who suffers and you are setting your mind not on and then he will reward everyone divine things but on human things. according to what each has done. dies contradicts this popular NARRATOR: Then Jesus told his Matthew 16.21-27 idea of the messiah’s might disciples— and mission. A powerless messiah seems no messiah at all. In Sunday’s gospel Peter, What does following on whose faith the Christian community builds, wrestles Jesus ask of us? with the contradiction. eter’s confession, the insists that tiny mustard seeds When Peter first hears gospel for last Sunday, can grow into bushes where the Jesus predict his passion, is a turning point in birds of the air nest. He insists he responds to prevent it. P Immediately and sharply, Matthew’s gospel. The narrative on patience when weeds grow builds toward Peter’s affirmation along with wheat. Jesus tells Peter to back off, that Jesus is the messiah. His disciples accompany referring to him as Satan In chapters 5-7 Matthew’s Jesus in his ministry of teaching, and a stumbling block— gospel pictures Jesus as the giver healing, and freeing people. It strong language. Peter gets of the new law, which he teaches is after twice feeding multitudes the label Satan for thinking in his sermon on the mount. In that Jesus asks his disciples who superficially with his mind chapters 8 and 9 Jesus heals the people say that he is and what on human rather than divine sick and frees the possessed. In significance they see in his things. chapter 13, Jesus uses parables actions. Peter responds, “You Three times Jesus predicts to sow the promise of God’s are the messiah, the Son of the his suffering, death, and kingdom in the lives and living God.” resurrection on the third day. imaginations of his disciples and “From that time on,” The repeated predictions the crowds who hear him. He Matthew’s narrative turns toward remind us readers that we know more than the disciples in the narrative. We know God raises up Jesus from the apparent failure of his suffering and death. In the narrative Jesus’ disciples struggle each time Jesus repeats what will happen to him in Jerusalem. Jesus rebukes Peter for protesting l In what ways has giving of the religious issues of his time. the first prediction. Jesus’ yourself helped you find your An economy of exclusion kills, life? second prediction distresses the he writes in Joy of the Gospel. whole company of his disciples l With whose suffering “How can it be that it is not (Matthew 18.22-23). today do you feel and act in news when a homeless person In response to Jesus’ third solidarity? dies of exposure, but it is news prediction, the mother of when the stock market loses James and John imagines the esus’ conversation with two points?” (#53). messiah is about to inaugurate J his disciples takes place Significantly Francis his kingdom. She believes in the district of Caesarea rode the bus in Buenos Aires. in the warrior messiah and Philippi. Jesus is back in In cities people live with the asks Jesus to declare that her Israel after his trip to Tyre poor. Daily brothers and two sons sit at his left and and Sidon where he frees a sisters ask us for money or right. James and John pledge Canaanite woman’s daughter food, ride the bus, sleep on the they can drink the cup Jesus from an unclean spirit. The train, sprawl in open spaces drinks, little realizing what they Roman name reminds us that downtown. Pope Francis writes promise. Jesus lives and ministers under out of his experience of people Jesus’ predictions invite Roman occupation. in the barrios. He wants us to reflect on the meaning To us today Jesus seems faithful Christians to invest in of his death and resurrection no political threat to the people who live in poverty. as we journey with his Roman state, yet his teachings In his exhortation Laudato uncomprehending disciples. then as now have political Si’ Pope Francis urges Catholics The gospel writer places several ramifications. Jesus holds the to join in repairing our teachings in Jesus’ mouth that poor, the peacemakers, and common home, the Earth. Not have us who follow in later the persecuted blessed (5.1- everyone agrees. He urges generations in mind. These 11). He teaches us to pray in actions from wearing sweaters sayings invite us to reflect on the Our Father for the reign in winter and not using air how we take up our cross and of God to come on earth (6.9- conditioning in summer to give ourselves to Jesus’ mission. 10). He identifies with the the necessity of wind and hungry and thirsty solar energy. The pope’s and insists what we exhortation On Love In The C do for the least, Family has also raised lively H we do for him criticism as he makes room for A J l Join or start a parish or R U (25.40). grace in complicated family I S neighborhood group to work for Like Jesus, relationships. T T affordable housing in your area. Y I Pope Francis l What that Jesus teaches move C l Volunteer at school to work has taken on you toward prophetic action? E with programs for families. suffering we look upon daily. Can we find the grace to know the anguish in our heart as the Betrayed by God? Spend a few minutes in indwelling of God? riting from exile, the quiet reflection. Then Guatemalan poet Jeremiah feels seduced. briefly discuss together and Julia Esquivel evokes identify one change each W O Lord, you have enticed me, wants to make this week in arresting images of God from her and I was enticed; light of Sunday’s readings. war-torn homeland. In her poem you have overpowered me, Pray together: “Confession,” the hand of God and you have prevailed. grips her heart through an old I have become a laughingstock LEADER: God of the Exodus, Indian “begging for the bread all day long; everyone mocks me. God of the poor, you give of justice at the door of a locked For whenever I speak, us strength and courage for church.” For her the tears of I must cry out, I must shout, the journey of faith. “Violence and destruction!” women mourning their sons, ALL: Give us all light as we lovers, and fathers whom the For the word of the Holy One discern our way together. military massacred are the tears has become for me a reproach of God. and derision all day long. Add your own intercessions. Esquivel confesses to God the If I say, “I will not mention God LEADER: God who times she wanted— or speak any more in God’s name,” raised Jesus from the to forget forever then within me there is something dead, nourish in us the like a burning fire the pain of the persecuted, hope for a just and shut up in my bones; the helplessness of the outcast, peaceful world. I am weary with holding it in, and the agony of the tortured. and I cannot. ALL: Teach us to work But God “conquered” and Jeremiah 20.7-9 and watch in patience “seduced” her through the l When has God taken you for your reign. suffering bodies of the poor until beyond your zone of comfort? Amen. God’s love “burned my heart.” l Such forceful language, What risks have you accepted in answering God’s call to you? Joan Mitchell, CSJ, editor of taken directly from Sunday’s Sunday by Sunday, holds a first reading from Jeremiah, is l When have you recognized Masters in Theological Studies troubling. Like the prophet of anguish in your heart as the from Harvard Divinity School and ancient Israel, this gifted poet of indwelling of God? a Ph.D. in New Testament from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Guatemala feels betrayed, even endangered by a compassion she would rather not feel. Yet at the The Story of Sunday by Sunday same time she knows that the fire burning in her heart comes from Thirty years ago I invited sisters over to reflect God and draws her inexorably on the Sunday gospels together. That circle still toward the anguish at the heart gathers every month. Many have joined us. Two of God. In our electronic age, the have died. Usually at least 20 of us gather. images of refugees, starving I started Sunday by Sunday with faith sharing groups like ours children, the victims of war are in mind. Sunday by Sunday is so easy to use most of us can everywhere. It is easy to become take turns leading. View the new online Sunday by Sunday numbed, to suffer compassion format at goodgroundpress.com. Sister Joan, Editor fatigue at the enormity of