29th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity…through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt shall he bear. It was not the crushing of Christ which pleased the Lord—His death is not the satisfaction of a God who delights in suffering. Rather, His obedience pleased the Lord. He accepted the crushing weight of sin, the scourging and humiliation of the cross, and the death accorded to criminals by their pagan rulers. His acceptance

pleased the Lord, and His humility unto death as a sheep led before the slaughter. He pleased the Lord through His

compassion, His meekness, and His choice of lowly estate. His poverty of spirit pleased the Lord.

The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Like the camel and the eye of the needle, the weight of riches drags us down and makes it difficult to ascend the narrow way which leads to salvation. The cross alone is more than we can bear without His help, much less weighed down by our other attachments. Christ did not come to bring us wealth, but to instruct us in poverty. He did not come to bring us success, but to instruct us in humility. He did not come to give us comfort, but to instruct us in suffering.

The world is cruel because it is fallen—its temporal goods veiled in the shadow of the valley of tears. The forbidden fruit, which tempted our first ancestors, tempts each of us with bread which decays, glory which fades, and power which only dies.

Life comes not from these things, says our Lord, but from the Word which proceeds from the mouth of God—the Logos who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Word of the Cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Christ tells us that everything we have desired, everything we have pursued, everything we have dreamed, everything that we are is wrong. So wrong, in fact, are we, that we must be reborn—started over from the very beginning. We must so thoroughly reject what we previously were that our old self is put to death as though on a cross, that we must put aside even our family in preference to Him, we must count trials as joy, and daily walk a path likened to the death marches of Roman convicts.

What miserable faith is this? What lousy company do we find in this macabre parade of death? We find the surprising truth that death has become life. Suffering has become joy. Poverty has become riches. The world is dead in sin, and to die to death is to live. Christ has forged the way for us, and He calls us out of that ancient grave

of our forefathers’ damnation. Why is His way so full of opposites? Because what the world offers is the opposite of what it seems. Do you have the faith to trust in what the world calls foolish? The first step is the ignominy of the cross. Take your impulses—your selfishness, your desires, your offense at others, your anger—and put them to death with the finality of Roman executioners. What awaits is not the searing nothing of annihilation, but liberation from the chains of sin. What awaits is the Eucharistic ocean which flows from the pierced Heart which so loves men. What awaits is the resurrection and the life, and the love beyond all telling which resides only in the bosom of Love Himself.