26^th Sunday of O.T. (B); 9-26-2021

Wis 2:12,17-20.  Ps 54.  Jas 3:16-4:3.  Mk 9:30-37

Deacon Jim McFadden

            Last Sunday we reflected upon the basic spiritual struggle of making the transition from the Ego-Drama (self-worship) to the Theo-Drama (worship of the one true God).  This transition is no mean task because the drive to be ego-centric– to save one’s life, to be great in the eyes of others, to lord it over others, to amass wealth, and to enjoy the pleasures of life—is the way of the world.  As we embrace this self-referential lifestyle via our thoughts, words, and deeds, it becomes internalized into a “second nature.”  We’re hard-wired to promote the individual Self as we pursue the goods of the world. 

             In this Sunday’s  Gospel reading,   Jesus reminds us that the  way of the world is  akin to the inappropriate use of a hand, a foot, and an eye (cf. 1 Cor 12:12-26).  These drives can be used to promote self-centeredness.  Take the hand: it’s the member of our body in which we grasp and take things.  In the course of our lives, in which the egoic Self is the center of our lives, we take and grasp for all sorts of things: money, status, pleasure, sex, power, prestige, security, and comfort.  This way of life goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis in which our original parents grasped from the fruit from Tree of Good and Evil.  They grasped at godliness but without God!  From the beginning our hands are a problem because they grasp what the Ego wants.

            We can ask ourselves: what are we grasping at in the course of our life?  Is that grasping putting the private, autonomous Self before God.  Am I putting myself in spiritual danger, keeping us from receiving the one thing essential which is God’s Life.?  If I am attached to the goods of the world, am I willing to cut that attachment off, to cut it out of my life.  If we think we can’t live without these things, if we have become what we covet, then we are enslaved, keeping us from being full alive.

            The second thing that Jesus talks about is cutting off your foot, if it’s your problem.  What’s the foot but the member which we walk, by which we set ourselves on a definitive path.  Since we’re made in the image and likeness of God, we are meant to spiritually walk towards God, who is the Way and  destiny of our life: we come from God and are meant to return to God—that is our spiritual journey.  St. Thomas Aquinas said that if you want to find joy—and who doesn’t (?)—walk the path that leads to God alone.

            What do we do with so much our lives?—we walk down errant paths; we choose paths that move us away from God.  These paths are acquired early; St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said that by the time a child reaches seven years, she has already bought into the Lie.  So, we walk down these paths pursuing the goods of the world.  As we get older, we may pick up the pace because we don’t have too much time left; so, we accumulate more and more, thereby moving us in the wrong direction.  Dante began his Divine Comedy with this observation: “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost” (The Inferno, Dante Alighieri, Canto 1).

            So, if your foot is your problem, cut it off.  What does that mean spiritually?  If you’re walking along the wrong road, you must be willing to cut that out, to change direction, to set off on the right path, which is the Way of Jesus. 

            Finally, Jesus speaks of the eye.  If it is your problem, pluck it out.  What’s the eye but the organ of vision.  Saints Augustine and Aquinas both say that the Beatific Vision is to “see” God face to face.  The goal of the spiritual life is a knowledge of God, a love of God, of seeing very deep into the very essence of God.  That means that the spiritual life is a constant seeking and seeing the things of God.

            Unfortunately, most of us spend so much of our lives looking at all the wrong places—we’re looking after, seduced by what the world has to offer.   So, if your eye is your problem, pluck it out.  Take the challenge of spiritual urgency.  If you’ve been looking in the wrong places, if you’ve been intrigued and beguiled by the wrong things, you must be willing to eliminate that thing from your life.  You must be willing to do something drastic to deal with it.

            People of God, we have to be willing to take drastic measures because what is at stake is our relationship with God and our eternal destiny.  Everything in our life is secondary.  Staying in right relationship to God means Life; breaking that relationship means hell.  Jesus uses the dramatic imagery of Gehenna to describe this ultimate exile.  .  Gehenna was a valley just outside the city of Jerusalem, where the early Canaanites once offered human sacrifice.  The Israelites turned that sacrilegious site into a garbage heap where refuse was constantly being burned.  The stench that arose from this site was a constant reminder of corruption.  Gehenna became the symbol of the unquenchable punishing fires of the afterlife in which God is absent.

That’s the image that Jesus uses to get our attention.  The choices we make have consequences.  And, the way we stay related to God is to eliminate what breaks the relationship.  When we cut away what keeps us from participating in God’s Life, we may do so initially to avoid the “fires of Gehenna.”  But, as we let go of our idols, these fires will become the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit.  While this is hard work,  the emphasis shifts on not what is being lost but on what is preserved: namely, Communion with God, fellowship with my brothers and sisters, and harmony with Creation, which happens every time we celebrate Holy Mass.

            Brothers and sisters, the spiritual life is the consummate high adventure: it’s demanding because everything important is at stake.  In St. Paul’s language, an athlete is willing to sacrifice all sorts of things to win a perishable crown

(cf. 1 Cor 9:25) What are we willing to sacrifice, to cut out our lives in order to gain eternal life?  That’s the hard questions raised by the challenging language of the Lord Jesus.  Amen.