The Lord God is My Help

In today's first reading, Is 50: 4c-9a, we encounter the Suffering Servant Song where Isaiah prophesies about Jesus.  Through Isaiah, Jesus tells us that "the Lord God is my help; therefore I am not disgraced...I shall not be put to shame. He is near who upholds my right...Who disputes my right?  Let [that person] confront me. See, the Lord God is my help; who will prove me wrong." In the Gospel, Peter attempts to prove Jesus wrong when He tells them that "the Son of Man must suffer greatly and  be rejected  by goth elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days,....Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him." Jesus tells Peter to "get behind me, Satan, You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

None of us wants to go to Calvary. None of us wants to suffer. How often when suffering occurs in our lives, in the lives of those we love, in the world itself,  in our churches, families, civic communities, do we not think "as human beings do" and "not as God does."  "How can God allow such a thing to happen?" "One disaster after another!" "Where is God in all of this?"  "I can't believe anymore!" "I am leaving this church, this community." "I'm divorcing this person and going out on my own,  back to my mother/father!"

"How can God allow ISIS, human trafficking, abortion, the violence of war, the tragic legislation against the poor and oppressed, against women and children, legislation which protects the resources of the rich while the poor suffer want?" we ask.  God brought the salvation of the world out of Jesus' death and brings salvation to each of us out of our sufferings as well. Jesus rose from the dead, and so will we.

Go forth, Jesus says to us,  before He returned to His Father, and make disciples of the whole world. Live the Gospel; proclaim it by your lives, using words only when necessary, St. Francis of Assisi, says to us.  By the work we do, in Jesus' name, wrongs are made right for us, as for Jesus, who did the work His Father sent him here to do!