By Most Rev Prakash Mallavarapu,
Archbishop of Visakhapatnam –
We will be celebrating in this month the Paschal Triduum and Easter. It is the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, passing from death to life in the death and resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ. We who are baptized are saved, liberated from sin and its consequence, and death want to recover that fullness of life in the Risen Christ. We died with Him and we rose to new life in Him and this dying and rising involves personal decision. It also requires of us perseverance because this dying and rising should happen daily in our life.
It is in this daily process that we want to remain in communion with the Lord and keep following Him. It is good to see how and to what extent we are following the Lord, dying and rising, within our particular state of life: religious men and women, priests and bishops, as married couples, as parents, etc!
To what should we keep dying and to what should we keep rising is the point for review in the Lenten season. In the corrections and clarifications Our Lord was giving to the Apostles/disciples, we see the kind of values, attitudes, behaviors, and priorities He expects of those who want to follow Him. In the Lenten season we need to truly see if we are faithful disciples of the Lord, understanding and following Him as He wants without the pursuit of our own agenda. We have to die to the ways of the world and rise to the ways of Jesus Christ, whose disciples we are!
Let us reflect on how the disciples reacted when Our Lord predicted three times about the imminent arrest, suffering, death and resurrection. The attitudes, values, priorities, behavior of the apostles were in a different track altogether than what He expected of His disciples/apostles. The apostles were either not able to see and accept his words or they did not understand what he was telling in anticipation.
Their reactions and responses, therefore, were very different than what He wanted them to understand and accept. Whatever be one’s state of life, we all know, we try to be faithful to what we are supposed to be or called to be. Perseverance in faithfulness in an uncompromising spirit is the challenge before the followers of Jesus Christ: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Mt 6:24). The best among us in a given section of people can fail in our faithfulness!! The question of Our Lord to the first disciples should help us, the present day disciples: “what are you seeking?” or “What do you want?”(Jn 1: 38). When there is a gap between what we are seeking and what the Lord is seeking from can be certainly a room for unfaithfulness!
The first prediction: goes like this: “Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly” (Mark 8: 31-33). In speaking to the apostles about the events that are going to happen He was placing before them “paschal mystery,” the mystery of His death and resurrection.
But, they were not able to comprehend what and why he was speaking of being killed and rising on the third day. Since they do not understand what He was saying, their reactions were different. They were in their own world as it were. Just see how St. Peter, who not long before that replied to the question, “Who do you say that I am, “saying”, You are the Christ,” reacts to this prediction of the suffering, death and resurrection: “And Peter took him, and he began to rebuke him.” He was unprepared to hear these words from their Master who is the Christ, the Anointed one.
It is not stated clearly what St. Peter said as he rebuked the Master but it definitely annoyed Our Lord. St. Peter did not yet understand what Jesus’ followers and disciples, should be prepared for. This suffering and death at the hands of the enemies was not acceptable. The Master also admonishes Peter in strong words, “Get behind me, Satan! You are not on the side of God.”
And then, Our Lord clarifies to Peter and other disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever saves his life will lose and who ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it…” (8: 34-38). There is nothing to gain if one is not prepared to lose and sacrifice in this life for His sake and for the sake of the gospel. In this Lenten season it is important to know as to what we are prepared to lose or give up for the sake of the Lord and His Gospel. What are we seeking as the disciples of the Lord while striving to live according to our state of life?
To be continued tomorrow…