Lord's Day Reflection: ‘It is better for you to enter into life!'

By Fr. John Luke Gregory, OFM*

Jesus is going up to Jerusalem with his disciples. Their journey began in Caesarea Philippi, with a new awareness.

Jesus had invited Simon Peter to “get behind Him”, with the humility of one who is willing to learn, and to everyone He had indicated the essential condition for a true disciple: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Because those who want to save their lives will lose them; but whosoever loses his life for My sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it” (Mk 8:35).

The road to Jerusalem, where Jesus gives of Himself completely to do the Father’s will, offering His life on the Cross, is the propitious time for the disciples to mature. We could say that it is the time in which the Twelve are educated in the school of Jesus and the Gospel.

Moreover, growing in the likeness of Jesus always takes the form of conversion, that is, of a radical change in the way of reasoning, of interpreting life and relationships and of making decisions.

In today’s Gospel passage, we find some “lessons” of the school of the Gospel that Jesus, the true Master and true Teacher, offers to his disciples. It all stems from a concrete episode.

The Apostle John rebels against the fact that someone who does not belong to the group of the Twelve claims to have the right to perform an exorcism and would like to prevent him from doing so. Jesus does not reproach him, but lovingly corrects him, offering him a different way of reading the same fact: to perform an exorcism means to possess the strength of Christ (in His name), which is necessary to overcome Satan.

Whosoever uses this force is necessarily in communion with Christ. He cannot therefore be His enemy (“to speak evil”).

The criterion of interpretation must not be merely “human”, but divine: what qualifies a person’s life is his communion with Jesus!

In fact, it is being in communion with Jesus that translates into a concrete way of acting: “in my Name!” In this way we understand more easily the teachings that follow, which sound very harsh, almost violent, to our ears.

They are expressions that have a precise intention: to safeguard and defend, with all our strength and at all costs, communion with our Lord and of the least of our brothers and sisters, that is, of our brothers and sisters who are weak in their faith.

Nothing and no one must stand in the way of the journey to Jesus and full belonging to Him. To scandalize, in fact, literally means “to put an obstacle in the way”, “to stumble”.

It is therefore a matter of making a precise choice: “to enter into life!”, to enter into eternal Life, which is full communion with the Most Holy Trinity, the inheritance in which Jesus makes us sharers through his Passover of Passion, Death and Resurrection, constituting us children of the heavenly Father.

To “enter into life ” we need radical decisions expressed today in the Gospel with some images: “cut off the foot”, “cut off the hand”, “gouge out an eye”. Which is like saying: choose how to use your faculties.

You decide where to go and where not to go, what to do and what not to do, on what to focus your gaze and your desire and on what not, based on a single criterion: does this make me progress towards eternal Life, does it help me to grow in friendship with Jesus, to live in God’s Grace or not?

Everything that hinders the relationship with Jesus must be cut out and extracted! Compromises with evil are like a great stone placed on the path that makes us stumble and fall and risks taking us away from the love of the Lord.

Today, the Gospel asks you and me: what do you choose? Are you satisfied with a fleeting and deceptive pleasure with the risk of losing the only true good? Or, even with difficulty, do you decide to invest all your faculties to open yourself to the extraordinary gift of divine life, which is freely given to you and which Jesus won for you with the sacrifice of the Cross?

Jesus encourages us: “It is better for you to enter into life! ”

* Custody of the Holy Land