Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time A-1
Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 18 (17):19-20 The Lord became my protector. He brought me out to a place of freedom; he saved me because he delighted in me.
Collect Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that the course of our world may be directed by your peaceful rule and that your Church may rejoice, untroubled in her devotion. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Scripture today: 1 Peter 1:10-16; Psalm 98:1-4; Mark 10:28-31
Peter said to Jesus, We have left everything to follow you! I tell you the truth, Jesus replied, no-one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields— and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. (Mark 10:28-31)
Follow Jesus I am not aware that the founders of the great religions of the world laid it down as of the essence of their religion that they themselves be loved and followed as the object of their religion. Mahomet is thought by the Muslim to be Allah’s messenger and prophet — and that is how he is referred to, as the Prophet. He is understood to point to Allah and to announce Allah’s messages and revelations. The Koran is not the book about Mahomet, but about Allah and his will for mankind, as Mahomet thought of it. Even if Mahomet is taken by this or that Muslim to be something more in his or her life than Allah’s messenger and prophet, this is not as it is in the religion of Islam. Buddha, long before Mahomet, founded what became a great faith and he bequeathed to countless followers what he taught to be the way of enlightenment. Happiness would be achieved in the attainment of Nirvana and in a detachment from all earthly desires. Now, whatever be the practice of this or that Buddhist, Buddha did not present himself as the object of his way. He is not the formal focus of the Buddhist faith. Rather, he is the great paradigm and exemplar of all he taught and it is in that sense that his disciples, past and present look to him. Again, Zarathustra was a great teacher and the Zoroastrian religion has for its focus not him but the ultimates he pointed to. The origins of Hinduism are lost from our sight in history, but it too takes its innumerable devotees to the numinous as it understands it to be — and not to any founder. Ah! But the case is very different in the Christian religion. Jesus of Nazareth is the undisputed founder of the great Christian religion and he is also its undisputed focus. He is this not just by some curious accident of history, as if the course of Christian thought just happened to evolve to this — and there have been scholars who have even proposed this notion. But no, Christ is the object of Christianity from the beginning and he is this by the formal intention of its most holy founder.
It is this which stands forth in our Gospel passage today (Mark 10:28‑31). The passage is from the Gospel of St Mark, and scholars recognize that Mark’s Gospel is founded on the preaching and recollections of Simon Peter, for Mark was his assistant. It may be called the Gospel of the early Church of Rome of which Peter was the first Bishop. In our passage today it is Peter who states the fact of their ardent following of him and which drew from our Lord a most important answer. Peter says to our Lord, we have left all to follow you. It shows the very personal following that this has constituted. Peter does not simply say that he and they have accepted our Lord’s teaching fully. No, he states that they have followed him, and left all to do so. Of course an essential component of this has been the full acceptance of his teaching. But they were still hearing and learning it, and a great deal they did not comprehend still. Still, even if they had grasped his teaching as yet only in part, they had left all in order to follow him. On another occasion a rich young man came before our Lord and asked what more he needed to do to gain eternal life. He was asking for teaching. He wanted guidance and implied that he was ready to accept further teaching. But what did our Lord do? He told him that if he wanted to be perfect, he should sell all he had and give the money to the poor, and then come and follow him. The personal following of Jesus would take him to perfection. In his reply to Peter in our Gospel today our Lord speaks of the reward coming to those who leave all in order to follow him. The reward is great beyond measure, but the point we ought notice here is that our Lord places himself at the centre and focus of the life of his disciple. All this is to say that the Christian religion and the Church which brings it to mankind proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord, he is God and he is man’s Saviour. Life is to be found not simply in following a teaching as if detached from Christ’s person. No, he, Christ, is the Way and the Truth and the Life. The height of religion is the love of Jesus.
Man was made to know, love and serve God here on earth and so to see and enjoy him forever in heaven. God is the object of man’s life. What is to be said of God is to be said of Jesus Christ. Christ said that if we love him we shall keep his word, and if we do this, the Father will love us and both he, the Father, and Jesus his Son will come and make their abode with us. Let us keep our gaze on the person of Jesus and understand that life’s project is to love him with all our heart and to live according to his word and teaching. If we do this then life, abundant and eternal life, will be ours.
(E.J.Tyler)
-----------------------