God Forbid
22nd Sunday of the Ordinary Time – God Forbid
I met Cooper one Sunday after having celebrated Mass at a parish in North Wilmington. He was about 6-years-old at the time. Loves hockey – especially the Avalanche — and video games. Adores his golden lab. Tolerates his older sister. Cooper was at Mass that weekend with his parents before heading to Nemours Children’s Hospital to undergo a rigorous hours-long surgery in which his hip bones had to be broken at their sockets and then reset. This wasn’t the first time. Or the most painful. It won’t be the last one, either.
Because here’s the truth: if Cooper wants to live, he will have to carry the cross of having to undergo surgeries on his broken body for the rest of his life.
Many say: “That’s no way to live. Poor kid.”
His Mom, though, always responds patiently to those who don’t understand: “Somedays are hellish, but how can I stop fighting for him?”
Some days are hellish, that’s true. Some seasons of our lives are, too. Not just a day, but months … even years. Living without a spouse. Battling depression and anxiety all the time. Constantly sick. The journey isn’t easy.
And that’s exactly why Jesus told Peter in today’s Gospel to, literally, “Get the hell behind me.”
Because Peter, God love him, wanted to make the journey easy for Jesus. The one whom he just called “the Christ” in the scene immediately before this one (and the one we heard proclaimed in last week’s Gospel) now says to his Savior: “Don’t suffer for us.”
In other words: “You don’t have to carry the Cross, Lord. You want to save us and the world? Find another way.”
Funny thing is: Because Jesus is God, he could have. Jesus could have snapped his fingers or stubbed his toe and that would have been enough to save us from sin and death.
But no: he went all the way to the Cross out of love for us. No other reason.
Love let Himself be crucified for you and for me.
I often think about how pure and lovingly selfless that act was: God is thirsting for us so intensely that He was willing to undergo the effects of every sin we could ever throw at him – and take on all the world’s suffering – just to bring us back.
Every single story throughout Scripture is one of God’s love desiring nothing more than to call us back to Him: to love, to truth, to authentic freedom. And it’s a love that at the very same time also reminds us: I am with you always. I am with you not just in moments of prayer or when you are being “good.” I am not only there when life seems to be going your way.
Rather, I am there when life is hard … when the Cross is heavy … when there seems to be no end to the suffering. THAT’S why Christ pushed back against Peter’s suggestion to avoid Calvary.
After all, how could a loving God claim to love us if God didn’t first understand everything we experience on the journey? How could He claim to be with us always if He wasn’t also with us in times of suffering and pain?
We can’t forget that God isn’t “out there in the heavens” – some shadowy figure who maybe started this whole thing we call ‘life’ and then just stepped back to watch it unfold until we cease to exist.
No. That’s not God.
God is with us. Emmanuel.
And so He stays with us in the exhausting chemo treatments … in the painful marriage separation … at the funeral home … in the loneliness and isolation of a quiet apartment or nursing home. Everywhere there’s suffering, He’s there.
Peter thought that the Christ shouldn’t suffer like that. No, the Christ (Messiah) should be a warrior untouched by pain and sorrow and grief.
And yet that’s EXACTLY why He came. He came for little boys like Cooper, scared to undergo yet another agonizing surgery. He came for Cooper’s mom, sitting day-in and day-out at the bedside of a very sick boy. Jesus Christ came to be with all of us who carry our own crosses thorough life: “Take up your Cross and follow me,” he reminds ustime and again.
Why? Because He’s already there in it. Because He’s transforming us and sanctifying us through the Cross. Because He’s using our suffering offered back to Him in order to save souls. Our offered crosses united to His become the ultimate Gift of Salvific Love for the world.
Ultimately, whether we like it or not, the Cross is the only way Resurrection happens.
We can either carry it with Him, or carry it without Him. But carry it we must.
And yet, I think that if we choose begrudgingly to carry the crosses that come our way without Him – to fight it and complain all the time and fail to see God-with-us – then we lose the opportunity to become selfless, to grow in holiness and to love authentically as God does.
Is it normal and natural to push back and fight against the suffering that comes our way? Most definitely. The Lord understands and is filled with compassion. And yet, into that very space, He continues to gently and patiently speak to our hearts: don’t lose the chance for resurrection in our daily lives. Don’t lose the opportunity to be transformed into another Christ. Don’t lose the chance to help others when suffering comes their way by letting them see the light that comes from your own cross.
“Poor kid,” people often whisper when they see Cooper. But not according to Mom: “He’s my inspiration every day,” she said. “He shows me how to live with courage because he’s carrying his cross with dignity. And he’s so compassionate to others who suffer.”
Cooper’s cross is transforming him into loving as Christ does. God forbid, Lord, we fail to let ours transform us, too.