August 30, 2026 -- 22nd Sunday “A”
Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27
H O M I L Y
We recently celebrated the feast of Saint Augustine. One of his most beautiful and best-known writings is, of course, his “Confessions” — “confessions” not so much in the sense of “confession of sins” as in the sense of “confession or proclamation of the wonders of God” in his life.
Now, there is a prophet of the Old Testament who also left us “Confessions.” In fact, this is the title given to a section of the Book of Jeremiah—specifically, the section from which the passage we heard as the first reading of this Eucharist is taken.
Jeremiah is one of the most poignant figures in the Old Testament. He did not possess the fiery and powerful nature one might expect to find in a prophet. He was weak, extremely sensitive, and somewhat prone to depression. And, out of fidelity to the mission he had received from God—a mission he tried to refuse—he had to constantly convey to the people a message they did not want to hear. At times he felt as though he had been deceived by God, entangled in the bonds of love. To describe the force with which God had entered his life, he uses explicitly sexual language: “You seduced me, and I let myself be seduced; you overpowered me (in Hebrew: ‘you raped me’), and you prevailed.”
If we now turn to the Gospel, we see that Jesus had a similar experience. After Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi—which we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel—Jesus begins to speak to his disciples about his death. Later, he will also speak about it to the crowd; but first he must prepare his disciples: “Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer… be put to death and rise again on the third day.”
There is, in this sentence from the Gospel, a word of the utmost importance: the verb “must.” “…he began to tell them plainly that he must go to Jerusalem…” Jesus’ death was not something that came from outside his life, like an accident that happens by chance. This death was part of his destiny—or rather, his mission. He had to die. Jesus was obedient to this mission, obedient even unto death, despite the fear and anguish he felt.
Then, in the second part of the Gospel, we hear Jesus preparing his disciples to accept their own deaths as well, with the same attitude and the same eagerness: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross...” He must be ready to lose his own life. This is about much more than “making sacrifices.” Many, in fact, are willing to “sacrifice” themselves, but are not ready to give themselves. Yet this is precisely what Jesus asks.
If we are faithful to our mission as Christians, and if we follow in Christ’s footsteps, many occasions will arise where we will have to choose between: either acting like everyone else or dying to ourselves; between: either receiving the crowd’s approval or dying to ourselves; between: either going with the flow or dying to ourselves. We will then discover, like Jesus, that we must die. This is a “duty,” an aspect of our mission. In this death lies the fullness of life.
This introduces a tension into our lives, a sense of urgency, which Jeremiah expresses beautifully in his Confessions: “I said to myself, ‘I will no longer think of him; I will no longer speak in his name!’ But in my heart was a burning fire, trapped within my bones...”
When we are tempted to take refuge in the silence of complicity, when we wish we could escape our mission as witnesses, may the love of Christ burn like a blazing fire in our hearts and in our very bones. May the Bread we eat in this Eucharist be within us a consuming fire that protects us from all forms of cowardice or infidelity and enables us to love even unto death.
Armand Veilleux