CARRYING OUR CROSS! ~ CookingFood.Org

“SEEDS OF LIFE”

Sunday, 19th June 2016.

Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

Zec 12: 10-11, 13:1;

Ps 63: 2-6, 8-9;

Gal 3: 26-29;

Lk9: 18-24.

CARRYING OUR CROSS!

Today’s first reading taken from the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, speaks of a crime of which everyone in Jerusalem was guilty of. Zechariah foretells that at the death of that innocent person, a fountain of water would spring for the benefit of everyone, and that only by washing in its water would people be cleansed of their sins. In his Gospel, John sees Zechariah’s prophecy fulfilled when the soldier pierced Jesus’ side with the lance (Jn 19: 37).The Church has taken Zechariah’s announcement as background to the passage of today’s Gospel in which Jesus announces not only his passion and death but our own sharing in it as well.

In the second reading taken from the letter of Paul to the Galatians, Paul insists that what saves a person is Faith in the Risen Christ and love for neighbor. Nothing else is needed and nothing else can save. Paul tells us that by making us God’s children at Baptism, Christ pulled down all the dividing barriers that man’s pride had raised in the past and keeps on raising back all the time. The

Sunday Eucharist is an invitation to pull down the barriers we might have raised at the individual or community level during the past week.

The lesson the Gospel gives is that: A true follower of Christ if he values eternal life must be ready to carry his cross and, if necessary, must be ready to be nailed to it, as Christ was. We are Christians because we sincerely want to have the everlasting life he came on earth to give us. He went through the excruciating death by crucifixion, the most painful and the most humiliating form of execution then known. He did so in order to enable us to merit heaven. He was the Son of God. He had no sins or faults of any kind to atone for. His sufferings were all willingly undertaken for our sakes.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that we should be expected to imitate him for our own sakes and in so far as God will demand it of us, by carrying our daily crosses. Down through the nineteen and a half centuries of the Church’s history, there have been heroic examples of men and women who have undergone torture and martyrdom rather than deny Christ or risk their eternal life. We respect them and we honor them. Most of us may feel we would be unable to face such a test of our faith. But God will see to that. When he sends a heavy cross, he strengthens the shoulder that has to bear it. What the vast majority of us is called on and expected to do, is to bear our own relatively little daily crosses cheerfully and gladly. Bearing patiently with one’s state in life when others seem to have the best of everything, putting up with a nagging wife or husband, often is a slow and private martyrdom. Forgiving those who injure us and not seeking revenge is a heavy cross, too. Bearing ill-health patiently, instead of perpetually grumbling against God and against those around us, is another form of Christian martyrdom.

“When we journey without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord, we are worldly” (Pope Francis).

Prayer: Thank You, God, for the gift of faith. Thank you, Christ, for having made eternal life available to me, and for showing me how to reach it. Please give me the grace and the strength to show myself worth of my heavenly calling by carrying cheerfully ever day the crosses You wish to send me. Amen.