Conditions of Discipleship [September 16, 2012]

The Sunday Gospel [September 16, 2012]

Mark 8:27-35

27Now Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28They said in reply, “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” 29And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Messiah.” 30Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.

31He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. 32He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

34He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 35For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.

Reflection

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” ~ v. 34

Wilfred Funk writes:
Lord Byron had a clubfoot;
Robert Louis Stevenson and John Keats had tuberculosis.
Charles Steinmetz and Alexander Pope were hunchbacks.
Admiral Nelson had only one eye’
Edgar Allan Poe was a psychoneurotic
Charles Darwin was an invalid;
Julius Caesar was an epileptic;
Thomas Edison and Ludwig von Beethoven were deaf, and
Peter Stuyvesant had a wooden leg.”
The significant thing about each of these is that they achieved mightily in the face of what most would have considered a cross.

If God asked me to carry one of the above crosses which would I choose?

“If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you.” ~ Thomas A Kempis

Reflection Credits: Fr. Mark Link, S.J., Daily Homilies

Source: The Reflection is from Bro. Abel Navarro (you can visit his blog at http://myblogabelnavarroabel.blogspot.com/).