St John the Evangelist Parish

September 15, 2024

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

This morning, I received a text message that a member of my extended family would likely die of cancer within the next few hours. His name is Luke. He is a 45-year-old husband and father of six. Though I am not as close to him as my sister (she is his sister-in-law and knows him well), I wonder how we, including Luke himself, manage such a terribly awful and unfair situation.

The words of this Sunday’s Gospel offer a powerful and challenging path. Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Today, I see with new freshness the starkness and strangeness of the words take up. The cross stands for suffering, which is unjust, absurd, seemingly hopeless, and humiliating. Jesus doesn’t say “accept” or “endure” or “tolerate,” but “take up.” Embrace it actively. Choose it and lift it up for others to see what terrifies and sickens us. But somehow, for Jesus, this is the path to “saving one's life.” A new world is breaking in, one in which love is everything when no relationship can be wounded or die. I trust that in the embraced suffering of Luke and his loved ones, Jesus is taking up his cross and saving us all.

By the time you read this, barring a miracle, Luke will have died. He will no longer be carrying his cross. But we all still face suffering. This week, let’s not just endure but take up our crosses, big and small. That’s our only hope for saving our lives.