December 14, 2019
St. John Paul II Shepherds Guild
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
1 Corinthians 2:1-10A
Psalm 37:3-4, 5-6, 30-31
Luke 14:25-33
Today we gather to pray as members of the St. John Paul II Shepherd's Guild on this Advent Saturday and celebrate the Memorial of St. John of the Cross. He is a great doctor of the Church whose life and teaching were instrumental in the renewal of the Carmelite order and that of priestly life in the period immediately after the start of the Protestant reformation at a time of great turmoil and scandal in the life of the Church.
The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel serve as our beginning and ending point for our reflection. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The family is the most important foundation to society. This is a point of nature, so why does Jesus speak of “hatred for the father and mother etc.?” He is not telling us to hate but rather He means that which we naturally think is the most important part of life, is actually less than the Cross involved in true discipleship of Jesus — the Cross of sacrificial love that necessarily involves the pain of suffering, the suffering of conversion. He is showing us that family life is not meant to look inward but to look outward in care and concern for others, as Christ does. The Gospel is not about establishing a family dynasty; a dynasty that in priestly life can look like a club or a clique, just as parish life can look like a club or a clique. The institution must serve the mission of the salvation of souls, not the other way around.
St. John of the Cross truly experienced this life of conversion only after he was ordained a Carmelite priest with the religious name of John of St. Matthias. He encountered Teresa of Avila who introduced him to the truth that priestly and religious life is not about belonging to a clique or being part of a club. Priestly life necessarily involves caring about people as Christ cares for them. It is about caring for people by telling them the truth of the Gospel and of conversion to the truth even though that conversion costs us suffering and rejection. Saint John of the Cross did not suffer from the hands of Moslems, or atheists, or from the adherents of the Protestant reformation. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who didn’t want to live the authentic faith. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who preferred to make the Church and their vocation a membership in an elite club. This was his cross that he offered for the sake of the very people who rejected him — out of love for Christ. He did so not to get his own way but out of obedient love for Christ. This, in many ways today, is the priest’s share in the Cross of Jesus, the suffering of love.
The cross is not suffering for its own sake. It’s not simply being in pain. To be stretched for greater glory is our experience and share of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Priests especially are called to embrace this stretching by Christ for the sake of the salvation of the people who, like ourselves, are not inclined in their human condition to embrace the same mystery of the cross because it hurts. So, in the life of the priest there is no substitute for leading by example. A priest will credibly preach Christ crucified when the people can see Christ’s wounds in the life of the priest. What does our vocation cost us? What are we freely willing to give? What are the authentic expectations we should have of our priests in their ministry? Are we willing to be challenged by our priests or do we simply want them to entertain us and reinforce our own preferences and prejudices? The message of John of the Cross, both that which he received and that which he preached and continues to preach to us today, is that the suffering of the cross requires us to love others and that love includes suffering rejection.
This is very much a part of the renewal of priestly life today and it is at the heart of authentic priesthood. The priest at his ordination hears the bishop speak these words to him. “Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to Him. Know what you are doing and imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.” It’s not enough to say Mass, we must open ourselves to be configured to Christ and willing to suffer as He did for the love of people who frequently did not reciprocate His love. As a friend of mine says, “Sometimes our suffering comes not so much from the crosses we carry but from the people who lean on them.”
Advent is that time for preparation and for waiting; not for wasting time but for taking stock of what we have been given to offer in the battle of which Christ speaks in the Gospel of today. As Pope Francis wrote to us in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, “Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil. The evil spirit of defeatism is brother to the temptation to separate, before its time, the wheat from the weeds; it is the fruit of an anxious and self-centered lack of trust.”