B Cycle – 25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Mk.9:30-37

During my time of prayer preparing for today’s homily, my mind immediately had me reflecting on my own sinfulness.  Who am I to believer I could articulate some insights into the mind of God.  Almost immediately another thought came to my mind, and it was the story of Adam’s sin and how the serpent tempted him by planting the seed of doubt in his mind. That first temptation and all temptations after that are based on lies spoken to us deliberately to plant the seed of doubt about either God’s goodness or our unworthiness. Why do we keep falling for the same old trick by the one who seeks to destroy us?  When will we overcome the lie and begin to live in the truth of God’s desires for our redemption?

Today’s first and second readings give us some insight into how evil works to destroy our confidence.  How we fail to grasp the reality of what God desires for us is for us to growth in our ability to trust God has a plan for our welfare not our demise (Jer. 29:11).  We need to be aware of how evil is constantly striving to have us believe we continually fail to please God. Evil is determined to confuse us by emphasizing our weaknesses.  This battle is unrelenting because we are “obnoxious” to evil as the Book of Wisdom says.  If we begin to understand forgiveness and God’s mercy, we become a threat to influence others to believe. 

In this battle, doubt is evil’s most powerful weapon. It is a guided missel aimed at our minds and hearts.  If we allow doubt to overwhelm us, we will fail succumb to the lie and will remain convinced we are unworthy of the promises of God.   Today these readings remind us how evil will target each of us because it is seeking to destroy anyone who can give witness to God’s love and forgiveness. 

We can easily say, “the Lord Upholds’ us” but do we believe that is true when we feel the weight of our wrong choices?  Our human heart seeks self-satisfaction and ignores what God desires for us.  It is our selfish ambition that brings about disorder in our lives and in the lives of those we love.  This is what James is telling us in our second reading but there is a solution to this failing of our human heart by embracing God’s promise to change us.  We call that moment repentance.  But it is a step beyond repentance because it is a hunger for something to change us.

But that depends on us deciding we want what God is offering us, a new life, a renewed hope, and a path to holiness (Ez.36:26). If we choose to turn toward God, we need to have some self-determination which is not dependent on self.  It depends on us surrendering to God’s plan for our transformation.  When we depend on God to remove our self-centeredness and begin to rely on His promise to transform our hearts (Ez.36:26) that we experience forgiveness. That is when we can begin a journey of believing we are saints dependent on God’s grace to walk by faith.      

That my brothers and sisters is a journey we begin by a willful, deliberate decision to stop trying to be holy and allow the Spirit to guide us to holiness.  We then stop seeking the approval of God and live knowing God is pleased with us even when we struggle with sin. Remember, “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom.3:23).  We are all sinful humans who will continue to sin and make mistakes in our journey into the heart of God.  The scriptures show us this is our nature, and yet we fail to notice how Jesus responds to our humanity.  He offers us forgiveness, teaches us spiritual truths, and shows us how we can become like Him.    

In this gospel today, Jesus is beginning to prepare the disciples for His death and resurrection. Remember how Peter responded when Jesus first talked about this? Peter said, “not you Lord” and Jesus rebukes him (Mk.8:33). Well, in this gospel they do not understand what rising from the dead means but mysteriously they remain silent.  Silence is a human reaction when we are confronted with a teaching, dogma, or theology we do not immediately grasp.  Perhaps the disciples silence was in response to the chastisement of Peter by Jesus.  Perhaps it is our human nature to cover up when we fail to understand so we profess to understand.  Perhaps we are afraid to show our ignorance, so we do not go deeper. 

We embrace these “great mysteries of faith” and move on but remain incapable of defending what we believe.  But look at how Jesus addresses their unbelief, He ignores it.  He knows our human hearts will fail to understand a lot of things about God’s love and His desires for each of us.  It is not our lack of understanding that is important it is what we do about our belief in Christ’s death paying the price for our sin.  Do we embrace it and live a life of thanksgiving for a gift we do not deserve?  Or do we revert to our human ways and continue trying to ensure our salvation?  Christ dies so we can become the person God created us to be.  Each one of us has been uniquely created and gifted to become witnesses of God’s love. We must eliminate any doubt about how sin impacts our worth and God’s longing to forgive us.  We must become the absolute best version of us God created.  To grasp a spiritual truth about who we are.  For we are “His handiwork created in Christ Jesus for the good works prepared in advance that we should live in them” (Eph.2:1