Fr Bernard writes…
Sunday 18th August 2019 20th Sunday of the Year
However hard we try we cannot get away from the bluntness of Jesus message in this weekend’s gospel passage. We remember that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem where he knows he will be betrayed, denied, handed over, tortured and crucified. This is the ‘baptism’ he says he must still receive. He is in distress and will be tested to the limit. Later in Luke’s Gospel he will ask the Father to take this chalice of suffering away from him, but he will do what he has to do to be faithful to his mission of reconciling humankind, indeed the whole of creation to the Father. Faithfulness to his mission comes at a price as it did for Jeremiah in the first reading, and as it does for anyone prepared to speak prophetically, be that Martin Luther King or Oscar Romero. But Jesus also knows that his way of living will bring division and by the time Luke wrote his Gospel Jesus’ followers were experiencing opposition and persecution, families were split and what he said in this short passage was a reality. We know that today if we stand up for what we believe in, if we refuse to go with the crowd, then we can provoke opposition or ridicule. There is enormous peer pressure, especially on our young people to take a different path to the one Jesus calls us to take. The 2nd reading can help us by reminding us that we are not alone, rather there are ‘witnesses on every side of us’, and if we do not lose sight of Jesus he will lead us in our faith and bring it to perfection.
Next weekend we welcome Mgr Paul Fisher to the parish to celebrate the weekend Masses.
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