God plants us on a rock. I find that a very realistic image for what it looks like to live out our lives in the Church. We don’t live in a rose garden, yet, and we don’t experience perpetual banquet, yet. As much as I hope we get glimmers of those realities now furtively, we live on a rock. It’s big and it’s craggy and it’s home.
If you
were at mass yesterday, think about the image we heard then of what it’s like
to live on a rock. It comes about nine
chapters earlier in Matthew’s gospel, but when we hear Peter called a rock, I
think we’re meant to think back to the end of the Sermon on the Mount and the parable
of the house built on rock. Buffeted by
storms, it remains standing. Sometimes
God does still the stormy waters, but often He doesn’t.
Look to
the rock from which we’re hewn. Look to
these two saints whose lives were rocked by an encounter with the divine. God didn’t shield them from the storm. A successful fisherman and a well-respected
Pharisee became itinerant preachers, followers of one crucified. They would endure arguments (even among each
other), ridicule, persecution and eventually martyrs’ deaths.
With the
confidence of Christ on the cross, we just heard Paul cite Psalm 22, the psalm
of the confident sufferer which begins with the pain of “My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me” and ends with the confidence that “God rescues me from
the lion’s mouth.”
Our hope
is not hope of evading the stormy blast.
Like an anchor, our hope does not evade the chaotic water but pierces
through it confident of hitting secure resurrection rock. Our hope rests on what we’re planted on; who
we’re planted on. St. Peter and St.
Paul, pray for us.
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