Discipleship: What does it entail? 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

Sunday, September 16, 2012

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us what it entails to be his disciples: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he (she) must deny himself (herself) and take up his (her) cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his (her) life will loose it, but whoever looses his (her) life for my sake will save it.”

But what does it mean to deny oneself? Let’s recall the denial of Peter. When Peter denied Jesus, he had said: “I do not know the man.” To deny oneself therefore is to say “I do not know myself.” To deny oneself is to migrate from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness and to other-centeredness. To deny oneself is to say “It’s all about Jesus!” It is this kind of denial that prompted St. Paul to declare in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Jesus enjoins his disciples to take up their cross daily and follow him. To take up our cross means to be prepared to face and confront the difficulty associated with being loyal and obedient to Jesus. To take up our cross means being ready to endure the worst that people can do to us for the sake of being true to the Lord. It means being ready to refuse to be intimidated by those who persecute us because we belong to Jesus. It means saying no even when it is most difficult to say so to those who want us to betray him. Being true to Jesus will bring some rejection and castigation. Those who hate your simplicity, your honesty, your faithfulness and your tidy moral life will come to paint you bad. It is usually said “If you cannot beat them, join them.” But if you refuse to join the bandwagon, they will come after you. But refusing to join the bandwagon of immorality instead prefer the castigation and hatred is part of the cross.

“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it…” God has given us life, not to horde it or to keep it for ourselves. We are given life to spend for others. Therefore the question is no longer “How much can I get”, but “How much can I give?” It is no longer “What is the safe thing to do? but “What is the right thing to do?”  If we are true to Jesus in time, he will be true to us in eternity. If we follow him in this life, in the next, he will count us among the elect. But if we disown him here on earth by the way we live, even when we confess him with our lips, he will disown us before the heavenly Father.

The good news is this: God will not let us carry a cross that is too heavy for us; and even the right weight of the cross we are allowed to carry has sufficient grace attached to it. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jesus says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Be Opened

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Gerard Majella Church

September 9, 2012

In today’s Gospel taken from Mark 7: 31-37, Jesus healed a deaf man. As soon as Jesus came into the district of Decapolis, people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment. Jesus did something different in the process of restoring the hearing and speaking ability of the needy man. He took him away from the crowd, put his finger into the man’s ears, and with spittle, he touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven from where our help comes from, Jesus groaned and said to him “Ephphatha!” which means “Be opened!” The man’s ears opened immediately and his speech impediment was removed and he started speaking with ease.

Did you notice that Jesus did not say to the deaf man “Hear!” or “Speak?” Rather he used the expression “Be opened!” This is an indication of how we are to live. We are to open up ourselves to the Word of God. Psalm 119: 11 says: Your word I have hidden in my heart that I may not sin against you. And in verse 105 of the same Psalm 119, the Psalmist declares: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. In the gospel of John 6: 63 Jesus says: The words I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life. We are to open up to the Word of God- the Word that is a lamp to our feet; the word that is a light for our path; the words that are spirit and life; the words that strengthen us to avoid sinning against God. When we open up ourselves to God, when we open up ourselves to the Word of God, God enables us to open up ourselves to each other. We will be able to see Jesus not only in the Eucharist, but also in others. When we open up ourselves to the Word of God, our thoughts and hearts will be purified, and when our thoughts and hearts are purified, we will be able to see God in everybody. Matthew 5:8 says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” If we stretch this famous beatitude of Jesus further, we will have the following: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God in everybody and in everyone.” 

I don’t think there is anybody in this Church that is deaf. Deafness is not a problem for most of us here. So today’s healing of the deaf man may not really interests some of us that much. But yet, Jesus used the expression “Be opened!” Our problem may not be physical deafness. But we may be too busy to hear Jesus. With our ears wide open and able to hear what is said far away, we still are not able to hear the sweet voice of our Lord. Because of this kind of deafness, we are not able to recognize him in the events of our life. 

We are so busy that life is slipping by at a very fast rate and we need to slow it down. We are so busy that we don’t even see or notice others. We don’t notice the teeming number of the not-haves in our society. As a nation, we seem to be deaf to the crying and mourning of those crying for a helping hand. We seem to have been deafened by the huge and massive wealth in the nation that we seem not to hear the voices of those who have not benefitted from this massive wealth. The unfounded fear of losing capitalism has deafened us and impaired our speech. We no longer speak the language of the Spirit which is love. Those who don’t speak the language of the Spirit- love, have speech impediment. They may be speaking clearly and hearing clearly, but as long as their speech is not the speech of the Spirit, they have speech impediment. If we don’t hear the voices of those on the margins of our society, we are deaf just like the man healed by Jesus today. We need to hear the healing voice of Jesus saying to us “Be opened!”

Sisters and brothers, Jesus healed the deaf man. Sometimes we can be deaf to life, to others and to Jesus. In 1 Kings 19, the story has it that prophet Elijah was in a cave, then he was told to go out and stand on the mountain before God. There was a hurricane but God was not in the hurricane. There was an earthquake but God was not in the earthquake. There was a fire but God was not in the fire. After the fire there was a gentle breeze. Immediately Elijah knew that God was in the gentle breeze so he went out to the entrance of the cave and covered his face. We need this gentle breeze in our life in order to hear Jesus speak to us. 

Before Jesus healed the deaf man in today’s gospel, he took him off by himself away from the crowd; he took him to a private place, looked up to heaven and then prayed for the man’s healing. We need to step aside sometimes in private with Jesus so that we can hear him speak to us. Let us open up ourselves so that we can hear the language of the Spirit, and that language is love. True love demands that we think of others especially those at the bottom of the ladder of life.