Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
It has been so moving to spend this past week watching and reading about Pope Francis' visit to Cuba and the United States. Someone asked me a couple weeks ago, "What's the big deal about Pope Francis coming to visit? Will anyone really care?" On the one hand, I could scarcely believe anyone would wonder that question; on the other, that question shows us Catholics how really very odd we can seem to non-Catholics. It is a big deal for the pope to be here, but it can be very difficult to put into words, for non-Catholics, why that is the case.
Part of the big deal is that so many people are surprised by this pope, surprised by what he says and does. Refusing to live in the papal apartments, inviting Syrian refugees to live in the Vatican, cleaning house in the Curia - people have been surprised by these actions and so much more. The Pope's surprises catch us unaware, cause us to think about different possibilities in life than the ones we had thought about. Hopefully, he causes us to follow Jesus more and more closely.
At its best, Christianity is an adventure, a journey full of surprises. Following Jesus brings us face to face with daily surprises and possibilities. Today's scriptures remind me of those kinds of surprises.
Haggai is a prophet during a time of bleakness and hardship. While sometimes Israel's prophets use times of hardship to tell the people that they have turned away from God, Haggai brings a surprising message of hope. He says that God promises to restore Israel's former glory "in a little while." When will that be? Well, that time, too, is a surprise, and will catch us unaware - but in the meantime, we are called to be people of hope.
We see the fulfillment of Haggai's prophetic hope in the gosepl reading for today (Luke 9:18-22). Jesus asks his disciples who the people say he is, and Peter answers: "The Christ of God." This kind of statement would ordinarily have been a hopeful one...especially for a people who longed to see the Roman authorities overthrown by armies and worldly ways of doing things. Yet Jesus "rebukes" his disciples and tells them not to tell anyone else who he is. In other words - do NOT have a hope in Jesus if your hope is that he will overthrow earthly kingdoms.
Then in the very next verses, Jesus tells his disciples how he will die but that he will be raised on the third day. Well, that's a surprise too and quite unlike what people thought and hoped for. The difficulty is that if the disciples are to be hopeful, it will be because they realize that Jesus points to a different understanding of hope than the versions of hope society holds out.
The pope's visit to the US enables us Catholics to think about what it means to be particularly and peculiarly Catholic in American society. Perhaps one of those ways is to be a people full of surprises as we follow the gospel. May we live the unexpected, surprising life to which Christ calls us!
- Jana M. Bennett