Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle A

First Reading - Jeremiah 20:7-9

Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 63:2-9

Second Reading - Romans 12:1-2

Alleluia Verse - Ephesians 1:17-18

Gospel - Matthew 16:21-27

“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”

Before Jesus started his public ministry the devil tempted him by offering him the world and all it holds if Jesus would only bend the knee and worship him. Jesus knew the purpose for which he had come into the world and that was to be a living sacrifice for the salvation and redemption of the world. We face the same temptation in our lives. We can pursue the things of this world or we can pursue the things of God, but we cannot do both. Do you know the purpose for which you have come into this world?

In the Baltimore Catechism, the answer to “Why did God make me?” is: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. This means God’s purpose is your happiness with Him after this life. God is sacrificial love. The currency of sacrificial love is suffering. You only love someone as much as you are willing to suffer for them. God so loved the world that he sacrificed everything he had to make it possible to offer us the opportunity to live forever with him in heaven. But living forever in heaven with God is not free. It comes at a price.

Jesus said that if we wish to follow him, we would have to deny ourselves and take up our own crosses. In other words, Jesus said that if we want to have eternal life in heaven, we too must become living sacrifices. We are presented the choice between love of self or love of God. Jesus said that if we love him, we would follow his commands to love God above all else and to love each other with the same sacrificial love. Love is an action, not a feeling. Love takes work. You cannot simply take Jesus as your personal Lord and savior and expect to get into heaven. Not everyone who says Lord, Lord with their lips will make it. If you want to live forever with God in heaven when you die you have to become a sacrifice for others in this life.

Anything that stands in the way of having sacrificial love for another is an obstacle to living with God in heaven. Hate, jealousy, envy, anger, bigotry, resentment, grudges are all obstacles the devil offers us to keep us from fully loving another. And we latch onto those things so easily. I hate this person or that person because I can’t stand their politics, what they say, what they stand for, the God they worship, or the person they choose to love. Jesus did not put caveats into his command to love each other sacrificially. He demands that we love each other regardless of the things the devil uses to separate us.

If you choose to deny yourself and follow Christ you will be met by a world that will mock and ridicule you. The devil will convince others to persecute you and hate you. You won’t be safe even among those who call themselves Christians. But to lose your life for the love of God gains you everything in the end. This is the hardest thing you can do and that is why it is a sacrifice. When we suffer for love we become a sacrifice pleasing to God. Suffering is the currency of love and love is never waisted with God.

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