Let Us Go To Jerusalem With Him
(see
Mt 16:21-27)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
In today’s Gospel, Jesus Christ our Lord and
Savior tells His disciples that He will go to Jerusalem where He must
accomplish His saving mission for the whole human race.
The disciples’ reaction to Jesus’
announcement, through that of Saint Peter, is clearly, if not a violent protest
against, a strong disagreement about how humanity should be saved from sin and
death.
God’s plan to free sinners from the power of
the Evil One has been well prepared for generations. In His turn, Jesus is willing to carry it out
into details as foretold by the Holy Bible:
Sacrifice
and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;
Holocaust
and sin offerings you took no delight in.
Then
I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, behold, I come to do your will, O
God.’[1]
For Jesus it would be more precious to do the
Holy Will of God the Father than to offer any sacrifice, even the sacrifice of
His own life.
Only by surrendering to God their free will
and saying ‘yes’ to His command can Christians deserve being true disciples of
Jesus Who all His life considered His food the completion of the Holy Will of
God the Father Who sent Him.[2]
Only by obeying God’s Holy Will without
reserve after the example of Jesus can Christians make worthy reparation for
all forms of evil consequences because of man’s disobedience.
This is the implication of what Jesus wants
to mention by saying to the disciples to go with Him to Jerusalem. Not only will they merely go there with Him
but they will join Him in the very act of accepting at all cost, even the cost
of their own lives, the Holy Will of God the Father.
Unfortunately, the disciples, for reasons unknown
to us, refuse to follow Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem, to the act of
absolute obedience, to the gift of their free will, and to the offering of
their own lives, to do the Holy Will of God.
“Going to Jerusalem with Jesus” remains for
us Christians, now and here, a challenge not easy to take with determination
and without reserve.
But Jesus is urging all of us to make a
choice:
Whoever wishes to come after me must
deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for my sake will find it.
How
do you think?
Let
us go to Jerusalem with Him.
