Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor.
“Looking Ahead” is a reflection on the Sunday readings, edited by Father Perry.
By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor | Looking Ahead
How does God think? None of us can really answer that question from personal experience, but only from the “revealed word” of God. In that revealed word, this “thinking” is shared with us by Jesus most directly in the Gospel today from Mark.
Jesus —
“Began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.
After a brief scuffle and rebuke of Peter —
“Get behind me, Satan” —
He tells us that this is the “thinking of God.” Most simply put, it is the “Paschal Mystery.” Some things — and perhaps we might even say, all things — can only come about through a “dying and rising.”
“Coming about — or “coming into existence” — necessarily means transformation. Even birth is that; whatever existed in the womb — and more precisely “how” it existed — is to be no longer. Ask a newborn baby (of course, you won’t get much of an answer). The crying is testimony enough. The baby — secure and happy in the womb, with sufficient warmth, and food and comfort and security — wants to escape the womb? I don’t think so. There is no vote, no opinion poll. Nature simply decides that life as it has been known for nine months is to be no longer. The baby must “die and rise” to life in the womb; that is, must leave the womb so that life can begin again in a much larger womb — the world!
This is ‘Paschal Mystery’
This mystery is a daily one for the rest of our lives. Each one is a dress rehearsal for the total “Paschal Mystery” to be realized in our physical death and resurrection — the promise.
Why do we resist it? Why can’t we see? Why do we rebuke this mystery as did Peter?
Why don’t we learn how to embrace it? Enter into it?
Jesus sees it so plainly. Perhaps that is why he could embrace it so totally —
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”
Quote of the week |
“All things are possible to one who believes.” — St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
[Image: “Get Thee Behind Me, Satan” | Ilya Repin (1895).]
