September 3, 2023
We meet deep human concerns and feelings in the gospel today. Peter is shocked to the core that Jesus would die; so shocked that he always later seemed to forget that Jesus promised that he would rise on the third day.
Jesus talks very seriously about the cost of following him, like the cost of following any commitment in life.
Jesus invites us to live at the deepest level of ourselves. In the area of life where we live and love, laugh and cry, worry and enjoy, hurt and forgive. In all these very personal sides of life, Jesus dwells, since he says that he makes his home in us.
We can call it a sort of “third day’ hope. Nothing except love, which is eternal, was final for Jesus. For all the worst things of life there was a third day. The day on which hope would be fuller than any despair, and when life would be more lasting than death. Jesus was like that – when people met him, they remembered him and remembered how he touched the fears and anxieties of their lives with a deep hope.
We are “third day” people, knowing that the love and life of God, promised at our baptism, will always be in the air around us, filling us with the breath of God, and breathing fragrance all around us like the best of flowers. Later they would be raised from final despair and hopelessness at his resurrection. But it took time!
Breathing in and out receive the peace of God.
On the in-breath, let the word ‘peace’ echo within you.
Lord, may I never lose faith in you.
