by Fr. Tommy Lane
What a turn of events! Just after Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, Jesus says,
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. (Mark
8:31)
This is the first of three times that Jesus predicted to his disciples that he would suffer and die in Jerusalem. Perhaps Peter was the only one of the Twelve who vaguely understood what Jesus meant because Peter rebuked Jesus (Mark 8:32). We will hear the second prediction in next Sunday’s Gospel. After the second passion prediction next Sunday, Mark tells us they did not understand what Jesus was saying (Mark 9:31-32), and after the third passion prediction James and John asked for seats on Jesus’ right and left so they obviously had no idea at all (Mark 10:33-40). No wonder that when the time came for Jesus’ passion, the apostles abandoned Jesus except John who went to the cross with Jesus’ mother Mary and the other women. Mary had been prepared since Jesus was a baby when Simeon said to her in the temple that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35).
Mary stood beneath the cross as Jesus suffered his last agony on the cross. She was not fainting from sorrow or despair. John’s Gospel specifically tells us Mary was standing beside the cross (John 19:25-26). We have the hymn Stabat Mater (The Mother was standing), popular on Good Friday. Standing beside the cross, Our Lady was with Jesus in his suffering, participating with Jesus in his suffering. I imagine she was in prayer, uniting herself with Jesus in offering Jesus to the Father in atonement for our sins. Our Lady fulfilled what Jesus said in today’s Gospel immediately after his passion prediction, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) Our Lady stood beside Jesus’ cross.
Suffering and the cross also come to us. Whatever way the cross comes to us, Jesus said in today’s Gospel to take up our cross and follow him. He invites us to stand beside him, like Our Lady, in prayerful union with him on his cross. I think this is what Paul meant when he wrote in his letter to the Colossians:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church. (Col 1:24 NABRE)
Paul said his suffering was making up for what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the Church. That is peculiar because Jesus’ suffering for us fully atoned for our sins. So, what did Paul mean? To put it simply, Paul was saying he was uniting his sufferings with those of Jesus and offering them up to Jesus for the good of the Church. So, Paul was doing like Our Lady, standing by Jesus’ cross.
Our sufferings have immense value for the salvation of others when we offer them to Jesus or to Our Lady to give to Jesus. We will not know until the next life how people benefit spiritually when we offer our sufferings to Jesus and Mary. This little incident might help to explain. When I was studying Scripture in Rome after ordination as a priest, I lived in a house for priests who were also studying. There were twenty-six of us. All the others were from central and eastern Europe. One of them, whose country had just emerged from behind the Iron Curtain / Soviet Union, asked me one day if I could spare some of my Mass offerings to give to him because he had none. Of course, I gladly shared Mass offerings with him, and I knew how much he needed the help because of his background. He was small and thin. I sometimes wondered if he had been hungry all his life before coming to Rome as a priest to study. Sometime afterwards he told me that when he converted the money from those Mass offerings into the currency of his country, it became so big in their currency that they were able to put a new roof on a church in his diocese! I think it is something similar when we unite our sufferings with those of Jesus on the cross or give them to Our Lady to give to Jesus. When we offer our sufferings to Jesus, even if to us they do not seem large, Jesus can spiritually reroof, so to speak, many people with them.
Our sufferings have immense value for the salvation of others when we offer them to Jesus or offer them to Our Lady to give to Jesus and I am sure she would magnify their value in giving them to Jesus. By doing so, we elevate our sufferings. Our sufferings become redemptive. Our sufferings do not go to waste but, to use the words of Paul, fill up Christ’s sufferings for the Church.
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. (Mark
8:31)
Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take
up his cross, and follow me. (Mark 8:34)
Standing by the cross of
Jesus [was] his mother. (John 19:25)
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2021
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Year B
Jesus with us carrying our cross 2024
Jesus took our sins on himself 2018
Professing our faith by how we live 2012
Do we live the faith we profess or run from the cross? 2006
Taking up our cross after Jesus
Related: Homilies on carrying our cross stories about our cross
Second Reading: faith and works Saved by Jesus and doing the will of the Father 2008