
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily June 23.
I’m sure we have all had the experience of daydreaming, fantasizing about astounding accomplishments. Young T-ball players fantasize about becoming professional athletes, setting new batting records and going to the World Series: their prowess evident to everyone. Success, success, success. The reality, however, is that even the best batters fail more often than they succeed — no one bats 1.000.
I’m sure that some of the cardinals who gathered in Rome last March fantasized about becoming the next pope. And that as pope he would convert the whole world, solve all the world’s problems and secure peace and justice for all. The glory of such a papacy would be evident to everyone. Success, success, success.
The reality is that even our greatest popes have to deal with a great deal of unpleasantness. Pope Benedict XVI was one of the most brilliant theologians ever elected to the papacy and yet he had to face one controversy after another. And now in Pope Francis the Lord has given us just the shepherd we need at this time in human history. His simplicity, his courage and his evident pastoral love inspire even many non-Catholics. But now we have begun to hear harsh criticism of him by some who style themselves as “more Catholic than the pope” (although in fact they do not even act like Christians). For instance, he washed the feet of a woman on Holy Thursday — and a Muslim woman at that. All our recent popes have had to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on controversial contemporary issues, and no matter what the pope does, you can be sure that there will many people who won’t like it.
But the only one he really has to please is the Lord. The papacy is a heavier cross to bear than most of us realize. Do you think all those trips and public appearances are fun? How about having no private life? And how about having to endure all the ugly things that people say?
In today’s Gospel Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” After a couple of other answers, Peter declares, “You are the Christ of God,” at which point Jesus says “not to tell this to anyone.”
The reason he wanted to keep this quiet was that he knew everyone would misunderstand it. They expected that the Messiah would be a glorious figure, who would raise up a great army, defeat the Romans and inaugurate a new era of glory for Israel. He would be even more successful than the great King David. The collective fantasy was that the Messiah would lead the people from success to even greater success, from glory to even greater glory.
Jesus knew that the reality would be very different from what people had fantasized. So he began to teach them that the Messiah would not look glorious in the eyes of the world. He would be embroiled in all kinds of controversy and would be rejected, tortured and consigned to a gruesome, humiliating death. The opposite of what the people expected. But that’s God’s way. Humans want success, but what God wants is faithfulness. He could care less about success in the eyes of the world.
The same should be true for us. If you are motivated by ambition for personal success, you’ll lose your very self.
But if you subordinate your will to that of God, getting with his program and doing things his way, you will have to face adversity and maybe even rejection, just like Jesus did — maybe even martyrdom — but ironically, you’ll find your true self. On the third day, once all the suffering was over, Jesus will rise from the dead. If you die to this world and lose yourself for Jesus’ sake, you too will share in his victory and not just in the world to come. You will be living a life that is more fully alive even now because it will be a life lived for others.