Saturday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 25, 2021

Luke 9:43b-45

While they were all amazed at his every deed, Jesus said to his disciples, “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

In St. Luke’s chronology, this saying of Jesus occurs after he was transfigured on the mountain, and then expelled a demon from a little boy which his Apostles had failed to cast out.  

A more literal translation of the Lord’s words is: “Lay you up in your hearts these words, for it shall come to pass that the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men.”  A distinction is to be made between “pay attention” and “lay up in your hearts”.  In the first, the speaker orders his hearers to listen closely.  In the second, the speaker wants his hearers to hold onto what he is telling them.  They are to listen to his message and ponder it.  A person who is told to “pay attention” may rightly discard the words after he has listened to them.  Jesus wants his Apostles to think about what he is telling them, to ponder it, and not to forget it.  This “handed over” or “delivered” comes from a Greek word that also means “to betray”.  Jesus speaks very clearly that he will be betrayed.  But what did that mean to the Apostles at that time?  St. Mark gives a fuller account of what Jesus said on this occasion: “The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise again the third day” (Mark 9, 30).  Speaking in this way after he was glorified before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, and after his marvelous exorcism of the boy, his words would have come across as nonsense.  He seemed at the height of his fame and in manifesting his power.  Nothing appeared in the way of his successful march on Jerusalem, where he would reestablish the kingdom of Israel.

“But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it.”  The Apostles were not ready to hear his words.  Their meaning escaped them because they did not want to face them.  Jesus’s saying might have been a parable for all they knew, and they were accustomed to ask Jesus the meaning of his parables.  But not this one.  Just as the Pharisees refused to believe that Jesus was from God despite all the miracles they witnessed, so the Apostles refused to believe that Jesus would be betrayed, arrested and killed.  And what did it mean that he would rise from the dead?

Times arise in our lives when we come face to face with some hard reality, something that flies on the face of our expectations.  We can take it seriously or go into denial about it.  A person could realize that he or she is called by God to the Priesthood or the religious life, and say no and refuse to think of it again.  Or the person can begin to think about this, and take time to get used to the idea.  Or someone could realize that they have been acting in a hurtful way to other people.  They can either think about this and change their behavior or reject the idea out of hand and go on as before, driving friends and family out of their lives.  It is necessary for us to “lay up in our hearts” the insights and calls Almighty God sends us and to follow them so that we might draw nearer to him as we do his will.