Friday in the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 7, 2020

Matthew 16, 24-28

Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay each according to his conduct. Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”

Many teachers or rabbis roamed through the Holy Land at the of Jesus.  Some, like John the Baptist, gathered large followings, and some attracted only a handful of disciples.  The proponents of sects like the Pharisees and Sadducees also taught distinctive doctrines and maintained that their way pointed out how best to worship God.  All of these teachers taught by saying, “The Lord God commanded, etc., and this is what he means.”  The Lord Jesus taught by saying, “This is what I say.”  In this way “he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 7, 29).  Furthermore, he backed his words with splendid miracles.  Truly, “never did man speak like this man” (John 7, 46).

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Here, Jesus goes beyond authoritatively teaching the truth about God.  As shocking as this sounded to the Apostles and his other disciples, this is a natural development of what he has said and done to this point.  He has shown himself to be the Son of God, and Peter has just confessed it.  If he is the Son of God, he alone can provide the way to heaven.  If, then, he speaks about carrying the dreadful cross, then this must be done.  After he had spoken, the Apostles probably discussed whether he was speaking in parables, but the gravity of the command could not have escaped them.  Clearly, this meant to follow him even if to the bitter end.  To help us understand the confusion this command would have caused among his followers, they were prepared to hear him say, Whoever wishes to come after me must follow me into battle.  The “cross” meant defeat, humiliation, and an agonizing, prolonged death.  The cross was the sentence given to defeated rebels, as in the case of six thousand survivors of the slave revolt under Spartacus, a hundred years before.  To many of his hears, it would have sounded as though Jesus were saying that they must follow him to terrible defeat, and that he expected to be defeated.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Note that Jesus does not say, for instance, “for the sake of God’s name”, or “for the sake of the temple”.  Only God, or a madman, could say what he is saying.  Only the most devoted, zealous follower or a madman could obey this.  In losing your life — for his sake — you will find it.  In the Second Book of Maccabees we find examples of Jews dying for the law and looking forward to the Resurrection for doing so.  Here, a Jew is say in essence that those who die for him can therefore look forward to the Resurrection.  

“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”  Jesus speaks to all would-be conquerors across the ages, and perhaps his words remind his hearers of Alexander the Great, who died at the height of his power, or Julius Caesar, who was killed shortly after defeating the Gauls.  His words also apply to those today who shed all morality in the climb up the corporate or political ladders, perhaps even going to the extreme of defending the practice of abortion in order to win votes.  The Lord Jesus speaks thus to contrast dying for for, which wins salvation, with “winning” some worldly prize, and losing one’s soul (“forfeits his life”).

“For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay each according to his conduct.”  This might seem a change of subject on first reading, but the Lord is saying here that a person’s “conduct” is the choice he makes for or against him: for the world or for its Creator.  The Lord will reward those who carry the cross after him, and punish those who refuse the cross and go on to selfish pursuits.

“Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”  These words might make us wonder because it sounds as though Jesus is saying that some hearing him would not die but would live until he came again to judge the world, and that certainly did not happen.  St. Albert the Great solves this problem by analyzing the expression Jesus uses, “not taste death”.  It is certainly an unusual expression.  How does a person “taste” death?  St. Albert points out that if Jesus meant to say, There are some who will not die until they see the .son of Man, etc., then that is what he would have said.  To “taste” death means to commit sin, or to experience the bitterness of death without belief in the Resurrection.  All to whom Jesus spoke died before the second coming, but there were some among them, such as the Apostles (minus Judas) who did not “taste” death.

If we follow Jesus, joining in the parade of the saints who “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Revelation 14, 4), then we shall see with them “the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”