In the Gospel Reading for this Sunday we see Jesus confronting the religious leaders of his time, who did not accept him as the Messiah. He tells them that other leaders would take their place. The dire warning was already foreshadowed in the Book of Isaiah, as we see in the First Reading.
In the Old Testament, God established a covenant with the Israelites. The Covenant anticipated the coming of the Messiah, who would liberate the Israelites from their bondage. When Christ, who is God Incarnate, came among us, he fulfilled the Old Covenant and created the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, God established a special relationship with the people of Israel, giving them the land of Israel as their inheritance. In the New Covenant, that special relationship is extended to all of humanity and encompasses all who are baptized into Christ and who lead a life following him through the Church he established. Instead of a physical land in this world, the New Covenant focuses on our heavenly land, the New Heaven and New Earth that will be fashioned by Christ at the end of the ages. In the Old Covenant, the Israelites were to follow the Mosaic Law. But the New Covenant is founded on accepting and reciprocating the love of Christ.
As we have seen, most of the religious leaders of the time did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. Their refusal to do so was, in large measure, due to a mistaken understanding of who the Messiah was to be. They envisioned the Messiah as a powerful military leader, who would overcome the Roman Empire by force and would establish a new, glorious empire in its place.
But Jesus did not come to conquer through physical force and to depose political enemies. Instead, he came to liberate us, all of humanity, from our sins. He did so by offering himself up as the sacrifice of atonement upon the Cross. Even though the Old Testament prophecies foretold what Jesus would do, the leaders of his time could not accept the idea that he would have to be crucified, that the self-sacrificial love of the Cross is at the heart of our relationship with God. Thus, the leaders lost the blessings that had been given to them.
We might wonder how this passage applies to us. The words of Jesus are a powerful warning against complacency. Those of us who live in the United States have received many blessings, a life of abundance that would be simply unthinkable for much of the rest of the world. Our cultural elites like to expound on how horrible our country is - but why then would millions upon millions of people from around the world want to come to live here? This past summer, tens of thousands of visitors came to the US from many countries in order to experience the World Cup games. Social media was full of videos in which the visitors raved about how much they had come to love the United States.
But, just after we have celebrated the 250th anniversary of our country, we need to ask ourselves the question: Can we lose our blessings too? The key problem with our culture is the resistance to the Cross. Just like the leaders at the time of Jesus, our secular culture is not willing accept the Cross. In fact, we might say that our secular culture hates nothing as much as it hates the Cross.
Our secular culture tells us to respond to suffering either with self-indulgence or with bitter anger. We are encouraged to deaden the feeling with entertainment or pleasure or chemicals, legal or otherwise. Or we are told that we need to embrace fury, plunging into a rampage of destruction.
To some extent, it is true that we should not blindly accept all suffering. For example, if I can alleviate a headache with a painkiller, then it make sense to take the medication. Or if I know that a certain food will make me feel sick, I should refrain from eating it. On a larger level, if we encounter injustice, we should strive against it.
At the same time, all of us will, at one time or another in our lives, be visited by suffering that we cannot overcome, suffering that we must endure. The key is how we respond to such suffering. We can allow the suffering to break us and destroy us, turning us into evil people, hurting others, even the most innocent, because of our pain. Or we can allow the suffering to cleanse us, to purify us, to make us into less self-centered, more loving people. When we look at the lives of the worst criminals, we usually try to see what trauma, what suffering led to their behavior. But if we look at the lives of the saints, we see that they all suffered tremendously. The criminals allowed their suffering to break them. The saints allowed their suffering to make them holy.
Our secular culture also hates the concept of voluntarily suffering for one another. For example, increasingly loud secular voices are claiming that there is nothing worse for a woman than to give of herself for her children. Nor is value placed on fathers sacrificing for their families. We are also told that we should kill those who are gravely ill through euthanasia, rather than giving of ourselves to take care of them. We are encouraged to focus on "me, me, me," rather than sacrificially giving of ourselves in our relationships with each other.
I venture to say that our culture is at a cross-roads today. Are we going to embrace the Cross again? Are we going to accept the purification that comes through suffering when we unite our pain with the suffering of Christ? Are we going to be willing to suffer sacrificially for one another, as Christ suffered for us? Or are we going to reject the Cross as the leaders at the time of Christ did and thereby lose our blessings?
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The readings for Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A are:
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Our Lady of Sorrows at Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion of Christ (c) 2016 by Zoltan Abraham.