On August 31, 1998, the first anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, many papers came out with the headline "Where is the Soul of Princess Diana." They were reporting the story that some women in England had withdrawn their children from an Evangelical Sunday school because the Sunday school teachers were teaching the kids that the soul of Princess Diana was in hell, whereas the women had already told their children that the soul of the Princess was in heaven. As a result, the question, "Where is the soul of Princess Diana?" became an issue. A popular radio station in Toronto went as far as to interview the Archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese to find out exactly the whereabouts of Princess Diana's soul.

How would Jesus have answered such a question? Suppose Jesus was on earth today and a reporter went to him and asked him, "Where is Princess Diana's soul?" what would be his answer? I think Jesus would look the reporter in the eye and tell him or her, "Try and save your own soul now that you still have the chance."

This is exactly what is happening in today's gospel. Jesus is going through the towns and villages teaching and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone interrupts him and asks, "Lord, will only a few be saved?"(Luke 13:33). What does Jesus answer? "My friend, strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able" (verse 24). We see that Jesus is not really answering the man's question: "Will only a few be saved?" In fact he is answering a more important question, "How can I be saved?"

As far as the important question of our salvation is concerned, there are two kinds of questions we could ask. We could ask curiosity questions aimed at obtaining information, facts and figures that do not affect our salvation one way or the other. Or we could ask a relevant question, which is a sincere quest for the truth that leads to salvation. Go through the gospels and you will find that Jesus has no time for questions of curiosity. In fact whenever someone asks a question of mere curiosity he does not answer it but uses the occasion to answer the relevant question that such a person should be asking. "Lord, will only a few be saved?" is a typical question of curiosity. If you know the answer, how will it affect your salvation one way or the other? So Jesus switches the question around, to one that is relevant for salvation and responds to the inquirer, "Strive to enter through the narrow door..."

Curiosity questions have a special appeal to the mass media and to popular imagination. When will the world come to an end? When is Armageddon coming? Who is the Anti-Christ? What is 666, the mark of the Anti-Christ? What will be the rapture? I want you to see that these are all questions of curiosity. Jesus does not answer such questions. Just before his Ascension his disciples asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" How did he reply? "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:6-8).

On a lighter mood, an open-air evangelist, preaching on today's gospel text was warning his congregation about the eternal damnation. "On the day of Judgment," he said, "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." An old woman in the crowd had a problem, "Look preacher, but I got no teeth!" "Never mind, Madam" says the preacher, "teeth will be provided." A curious question indeed!

So you see, it is a waste of breath to ask, "Where is the soul of Princess Diana?" It is a good example of a question of curiosity. Rather we should be asking questions of personal importance like, "What do I need to do to be saved? How can I serve G od better in my present situation in life? How can I make use of the opportunities God gives me here and now for my eternal salvation?" Let us take a moment and ask ourselves some of these relevant questions today.

The credit card is a great invention. With just a plastic card one can go into a shop and buy whatever one wants - a dress, a pair of shoes, grocery, a television set, and even a car - take it home and begin to enjoy it, all with just a promise to pay later, as money becomes available. It is a wonderful system that could be a lifesaver to someone in temporary financial crisis. But the credit card system can create in people the mentality of "have it now and pay later," which does not work in life generally. In the real life, most of the goods that come to us are prepaid. To pass your exams, you have to study beforehand. You cannot pass your exams now with a promise to complete the required courses later. To win a football match, the team must practice hard before the match, not after. Most goods and blessings that come to us in life are prepaid.

Discipline is the name we give to the necessary hard work and self-denial that people endure in order to prepay for a future reward. Discipline, as everyone knows, can be a very painful experience, but those who succeed after going through the rigour of discipline usually look back and agree that it was worth it. As today's second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews says, "discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11).

Wise parents raise their children with discipline. With discipline children are helped to cultivate good habits, such as, early to bed and early to rise, brushing their teeth and taking a shower, cleaning their rooms and helping out in the kitchen. With discipline children learn how to join the in the family meal rather than watch television all the time, how to make time to do their homework rather than browsing the internet all night long. At the time, they may object and think that their parents are harsh, but later in life, when they begin to reap the rewards of a disciplined life, they will thank their parents for inculcating some discipline into them,

Our second reading today compares God to good parents who discipline their children out of the love they have for them.

My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; 6 for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts. 7 Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? (Hebrews 12:5-7)

What discipline are we talking about here? For the early Christians it was the discipline of enduring the persecution, in which they were expected to remain steadfast in confessing their faith in Christ in the face of false accusations, torture and a painful death. This is seen as a discipline because it is a temporary pain and suffering that leads to eternal life, peace and happiness with God forever. For us today, our discipline could be the courage to speak the truth, to do what is right, and to keep the commandments of God, even when it is no longer fashionable to do so. Such a discipline will be inconvenient momentarily. It may cost us our friends, our jobs and some financial gain, in the short run. In the long run, however, it brings us the rewards of joy, peace and the contentment of a good conscience both in this life and in the world to come.

The passage ends by strongly urging believers to brace themselves up and overcome the disease of spiritual laziness that affects us all: "Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed" (Hebrews 12:12-13). Why are many of us nominal and lukewarm Christians? Because we are hesitant to submit ourselves to God's discipline. Let us today resolve to take upon ourselves the yoke of God's discipline, knowing that God has given it to us out of love and that this is the only way to make ourselves worthy of the future glory that our heavenly and loving Father has graciously reserved for His faithful children.

Jesus tells us very clearly today that it is not enough to follow Jesus, eat meals with him and listen to him. There is something more that has to be done. What is it that we must do?

To answer that question I am going to take you full circle back to the beginning of this Church year in Advent when we were told that we had to “repent”, and remind you that the meaning of this word is “to turn around or to turn back”.

But before we do that, let’s look at the Gospel reading more closely. At the beginning of today’s Gospel someone asks Jesus very pointedly “Lord, will only a few be saved?” To understand this question we need to look at a little bit of Hebrew tradition and culture. This was not a trick question really, as we have seen in the last few weeks, but a question based on the traditional Jewish idea that all Jews would be saved, that is would have a share in whatever the Messiah was bringing them. The Pharisees, however, who were very conservative and strict observers of the law, were teaching that not every Jew would be saved. The age to come was only for a few select people.  So this question, in a sense, was not about the Christian being saved or getting into the kingdom, as we often have applied it to ourselves today, frightening many Christians that they might not be able to get to heaven, and that God’s saving grace was not meant for them, but about Jews being saved by a Messiah.

Jesus answers the question rather indirectly and subtly, as he can sometimes do, and instead talks about the narrow door which could be difficult to get through when everyone is pushing and shoving. Jesus then uses a parable to explain to his followers that there is more to being a follower of Jesus than they might think.

Father John Pilch, a sociologist, explains that the idea of insiders and outsiders was very central to the Hebrew way of thought.  The family was inside; everyone who was not family was outside.  Being Jewish was inside. Not being Jewish – being a Gentile – was outside. There were, however, ways in which an outsider could become an insider.  You could marry into a family, for example. You could convert to Judaism. Or there were rituals that could cause someone to be family.  I remember when I was a boy that we used to become blood brothers by intermingling our blood.  That was supposed to make us ‘family” in a sense. For the Jew, another way of becoming an insider was to eat with others – to share bread. We have ritualized this element in our Christian tradition and we talk about the Mass as a meal where we come to share bread and become one.

Now Jesus’ disciples had all supped with Jesus and probably felt very strongly that they were now family. I am sure they must have felt that if Jesus were the messiah, that they would – as family – share in whatever rewards that would bring.

But in the parable Jesus tells, the insiders are turned away! Not only turned away but they are called evildoers and will not be able to enter the owner’s house. But why? they say.  We have eaten and drunk with you. We are family now.

Again, as we have seen over and over, Jesus turns expectations around and is counter cultural in order to get his followers to look at the world and their lives in a new way. It is not enough to be in the ‘family’, just to eat and drink and listen, but something more is expected. And, in fact, people who are outside the family may get in before family. “Then people will come” Jesus says, “from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”  Jesus has here turned around the expectations, the world view of these people who follow him. He concludes with the familiar aphorism: Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” How subversive Jesus is being, in an attempt to get people to re-evaluate, to look again at what seems normalized for them.

What isn’t contained in this excerpt though is the real answer that Jesus has gives and has built toward. We must repent, turn ourselves around, make changes in our lives, put into action what this new order shows us through the Beatitudes, for just one example. When we have done this, we will have prepared ourselves for the narrow gate or we can be sure the door will be opened to us when we knock.

I don’t really believe that Jesus was saying this to use scare tactics with people – the “Wait till your father gets home!” syndrome. But I do think he was trying to make us think twice about things we take for granted.  It is easy to get comfortable within our own paradigm. Jesus wants to make us uncomfortable and look at things in new ways, and in so doing cause us to reevaluate – to turn around and look at ourselves. To make straight the crooked road.

In the first reading today we read how Isaiah prophesied that the Lord was coming to gather all nations and tongues, and how the Lord will even make priests out of them. The narrow door is open to everyone. That should give us all hope. But besides the fact that we are all saved, all invited, St. Paul, in our second reading, reminds us that we must still discipline ourselves. Bad things still happen to good people, and he suggests that we look at things that happen to us that are difficult as strengthening us, getting us ready to get in the narrow door.

So what can all this mean to us for this week.  We should be rejoicing that Jesus has saved us all, but not get self-satisfied in our daily lives.  We need to discipline ourselves, use the the things that happen to us to help us grow, rather than get us down. We need to remember that the tested people, the people with the most problems, the last people,  may be the ones who get in the door first. And most of all, we need to remember to repent, to turn around, to look at what we are doing.  Those are the people that will easily slip through the narrow door.

 Homily for 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The new millennium has witnessed and continues to witness much violence. Hardly any day passes that we do not hear the sad news of violent aggression and brutality unleashed against innocent people somewhere around the world. To make matters worse, perpetrators of these acts of violence often try to justify these atrocities by claiming that they are fighting a holy war in God’s name. Think of the crusades, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Today’s readings are indeed a call to war: not a war against other people but a war against sin and corruption; not a war against people we perceive as evil, but a war against the evil one, the devil. Let us listen to these words of Jesus:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. (Luke 12:51-53)

Scholars tell us that Jesus is speaking here not about the purpose of his coming but about the inevitable consequence of his coming. Jesus came to reveal the true sons and daughters of God who listen to God’s word, and the children of this world who oppose God design. This divides all humankind into two camps, the camp of the godly and the camp of the ungodly. There is perpetual conflict, a state of war, between these two groups as one group strives to raise the world up to God and the other to pull it down to hell. These two groups do not live in two different parts of the world, they live side by side in the same neighbourhood, they live together under the same roof, and in fact the forces of good and evil often exist together in the same person.

The holy war to which Christ calls us, therefore, is not a war against people of certain nationalities or cultures, creeds or ideologies, but a war in which we first have to identify the forces for evil in our own persons and in the persons of those who are dear to us (father, son, mother, daughter, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law) and then declare an uncompromising war against these forces.

What are some of these evil forces that we are asked to war against? Well, why don’t we start with the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride (superiority complex), Covetousness (greed, seeking material prosperity at the expense of one’s soul), Lust (sexual abuse of minors, pornography, treating women as objects of pleasure), Anger (bitterness, hate, bearing grudges), Gluttony (excessive eating and drinking), Envy (self hate, rivalry), Sloth (seeking success without working for it). To these we can add the mother of all evils, injustice. If we declare war against these then we are fighting a holy war.

If we are at war then we should be prepared for some roughness. The enemy is also fighting against us and we may have to suffer some harm or hardship. Jeremiah in the first reading was fighting a holy war against the false prophets who prophesied only what the king and his officials wanted to hear. But Jeremiah stuck to the truth. And where did he end up? In a well of mud. But God sent a foreigner, an Ethiopian to come and save him. God never abandons His people. Jesus, our leader in God’s holy war did not escape the suffering and death on the cross. But on the third day God raised him to life victorious. God never abandons his people. He will not abandon us if we fight His holy war — the war against evil in ourselves and in the world.

With this thought that God never abandons his own, the author of Hebrews encourages us in the second reading to not grow weary or lose heart. We shall close with his words of advice:

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:3-4)

Today’s readings can be difficult to understand, and because of this, there have been various interpretations, some of which have not always been kind. I want to start with the Gospel today. It begins with a speech of Jesus in which he defines the nature of the message that he was bringing. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). The symbol of fire has many meanings and so it easy to see how it could be interpreted in many ways. In the Old Testament, fire was often seen as judgment, and so, many conservatives interpret this as Jesus saying that he will bring judgment on the earth, and with the sound of the second half of the statement, that judgment will probably not be good. But I think other interpretations fit in better with the overall pattern of Jesus’ thought as we have been reading him. Fire is also the symbol of the Holy Spirit. If you remember, the Spirit came down in the form of tongues of fire on the apostles. The Spirit, as we have seen is the gift of God to us which keeps God alive in us after Jesus’ ascension. But, to get the Spirit to us, Jesus has to go through his death and resurrection. Could that be why he says: how I wish it were already kindled”? I think so.

Then Jesus continues: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). This really isn’t a reference to the religious rite of baptism per se. It is the use of the word baptism meaning death of the old into something new. It means that Jesus realizes that he has to undergo a baptism by fire and be killed before the Spirit will be able to be with us and bring us peace. Later on, we do use that image of baptism in the sense that we say our baptisms caused the death of the old order and brought in the new. We were reborn, but to do that we had to die. Here, however,  Jesus is referring to his own suffering and death.

Then, surprisingly for many of us, Jesus says: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51) And he goes on to describe how even families will be divided because of him. This is so difficult because most of us, I think, associate Jesus with peace. At Mass each Sunday we say the word: “My peace I leave you, my peace I give you” (John 14:27) and how often does Jesus greet his apostles and disciples with the words: “Peace be with you.” But here, Jesus seems to deny that.

If we look at the whole context of the Jesus movement, we will see that Jesus coming and his message did divide families. He was not accepted by everyone – far from it, and those that did accept his message and became followers were often ostracized by their families.  Even Jesus’ own family had difficulties with what he was doing.

Like a doctor who has to excise a cancer by cutting it out, Jesus has had to say and do things which hurt or went against Jewish tradition, but he does it to save us and prepare us for the new life of the kingdom. The word “division” in Luke is the word “sword” in Matthew. It is the scalpel which cuts and gets rid of the bad so that the new can live. But it will also bring conflict, and we see that historically it did, even in Jesus’ time.

The spiritual peace that John often talks about, is the result of Christ’s actions, the result of the division he had created. The Spirit that comes in his stead is the Spirit of peace, and it is that spiritual peace that we most often think about when we think of what Jesus has brought to our lives.

But to get there, Jesus was going to have to be burned, be thrown into the pit. The First reading of Jeremiah today is often seen by Christians as a prophetic reading about Jesus. Like Jeremiah, Jesus had a tough message, and for that message he was thrown into a pit to die – and not just any pit, but a cistern. Now a cistern could be just a holding tank for water or it could be the place where  flushing toilets empty. In either case, there was only a muddy bottom in this particular cistern. At the end of the story, Jeremiah is raised from the cistern, though he is rescued before he dies. Jesus was not so lucky. Paul, in the Second Reading today from Hebrews refers to the Cross as Jesus’ shame – just as the cistern was Jeremiah’s shame.

Paul also refers to the hostility that Jesus suffered against himself from sinners. This is another reference to and example of the division that his message caused in that Hebrew society of Jesus’ day.

And, Paul seems to indicate that we too, in our own lives, will have cisterns, or pits of depths that we may have to fall into. He asks us when this happens in your lives, to remember Jesus and the hatred against him, so that “you may not grow weary or lose heart.”

And so, this is perhaps, a good lesson to take from today’s readings. We all have our troubles. Being human means having troubles, having ups and downs. How we react to those troubles is different for each of us, but from the readings today, we need to know first, that we are not alone – that Jesus suffered along with us… to the death – that his baptism of fire was like ours many times. He understands, he knows. He asks only that you put your faith in him, that you love him, and that you spread that loves to others. And if you do, you will be, in Paul’s words, running “with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And while this may not diminish the pits and cisterns in our lives, it will give us the strength to go on and know we are not alone in that suffering.  We can say like psalmist today: God “drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.” (Psalm 40.2)

And what a wonderful God it is who gives us the Good News that God understand us and  has suffered the same pits in life as we, because God has lived our human life through Jesus. This then is the wonderful, peace provoking Good News.

By Bishop Kasomo Daniel

 The Bishop of The Society of St.Peter and Paul (SSPP)

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Homily for 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The new millennium has witnessed and continues to witness much violence. Hardly any day passes that we do not hear the sad news of violent aggression and brutality unleashed against innocent people somewhere around the world. To make matters worse, perpetrators of these acts of violence often try to justify these atrocities by claiming that they are fighting a holy war in God’s name. Think of the crusades, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Today’s readings are indeed a call to war: not a war against other people but a war against sin and corruption; not a war against people we perceive as evil, but a war against the evil one, the devil. Let us listen to these words of Jesus:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. (Luke 12:51-53)

Scholars tell us that Jesus is speaking here not about the purpose of his coming but about the inevitable consequence of his coming. Jesus came to reveal the true sons and daughters of God who listen to God’s word, and the children of this world who oppose God design. This divides all humankind into two camps, the camp of the godly and the camp of the ungodly. There is perpetual conflict, a state of war, between these two groups as one group strives to raise the world up to God and the other to pull it down to hell. These two groups do not live in two different parts of the world, they live side by side in the same neighbourhood, they live together under the same roof, and in fact the forces of good and evil often exist together in the same person.

The holy war to which Christ calls us, therefore, is not a war against people of certain nationalities or cultures, creeds or ideologies, but a war in which we first have to identify the forces for evil in our own persons and in the persons of those who are dear to us (father, son, mother, daughter, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law) and then declare an uncompromising war against these forces.

What are some of these evil forces that we are asked to war against? Well, why don’t we start with the Seven Deadly Sins: Pride (superiority complex), Covetousness (greed, seeking material prosperity at the expense of one’s soul), Lust (sexual abuse of minors, pornography, treating women as objects of pleasure), Anger (bitterness, hate, bearing grudges), Gluttony (excessive eating and drinking), Envy (self hate, rivalry), Sloth (seeking success without working for it). To these we can add the mother of all evils, injustice. If we declare war against these then we are fighting a holy war.

If we are at war then we should be prepared for some roughness. The enemy is also fighting against us and we may have to suffer some harm or hardship. Jeremiah in the first reading was fighting a holy war against the false prophets who prophesied only what the king and his officials wanted to hear. But Jeremiah stuck to the truth. And where did he end up? In a well of mud. But God sent a foreigner, an Ethiopian to come and save him. God never abandons His people. Jesus, our leader in God’s holy war did not escape the suffering and death on the cross. But on the third day God raised him to life victorious. God never abandons his people. He will not abandon us if we fight His holy war — the war against evil in ourselves and in the world.

With this thought that God never abandons his own, the author of Hebrews encourages us in the second reading to not grow weary or lose heart. We shall close with his words of advice:

Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:3-4)

Today’s readings can be difficult to understand, and because of this, there have been various interpretations, some of which have not always been kind. I want to start with the Gospel today. It begins with a speech of Jesus in which he defines the nature of the message that he was bringing. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). The symbol of fire has many meanings and so it easy to see how it could be interpreted in many ways. In the Old Testament, fire was often seen as judgment, and so, many conservatives interpret this as Jesus saying that he will bring judgment on the earth, and with the sound of the second half of the statement, that judgment will probably not be good. But I think other interpretations fit in better with the overall pattern of Jesus’ thought as we have been reading him. Fire is also the symbol of the Holy Spirit. If you remember, the Spirit came down in the form of tongues of fire on the apostles. The Spirit, as we have seen is the gift of God to us which keeps God alive in us after Jesus’ ascension. But, to get the Spirit to us, Jesus has to go through his death and resurrection. Could that be why he says: how I wish it were already kindled”? I think so.

Then Jesus continues: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). This really isn’t a reference to the religious rite of baptism per se. It is the use of the word baptism meaning death of the old into something new. It means that Jesus realizes that he has to undergo a baptism by fire and be killed before the Spirit will be able to be with us and bring us peace. Later on, we do use that image of baptism in the sense that we say our baptisms caused the death of the old order and brought in the new. We were reborn, but to do that we had to die. Here, however,  Jesus is referring to his own suffering and death.

Then, surprisingly for many of us, Jesus says: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51) And he goes on to describe how even families will be divided because of him. This is so difficult because most of us, I think, associate Jesus with peace. At Mass each Sunday we say the word: “My peace I leave you, my peace I give you” (John 14:27) and how often does Jesus greet his apostles and disciples with the words: “Peace be with you.” But here, Jesus seems to deny that.

If we look at the whole context of the Jesus movement, we will see that Jesus coming and his message did divide families. He was not accepted by everyone – far from it, and those that did accept his message and became followers were often ostracized by their families.  Even Jesus’ own family had difficulties with what he was doing.

Like a doctor who has to excise a cancer by cutting it out, Jesus has had to say and do things which hurt or went against Jewish tradition, but he does it to save us and prepare us for the new life of the kingdom. The word “division” in Luke is the word “sword” in Matthew. It is the scalpel which cuts and gets rid of the bad so that the new can live. But it will also bring conflict, and we see that historically it did, even in Jesus’ time.

The spiritual peace that John often talks about, is the result of Christ’s actions, the result of the division he had created. The Spirit that comes in his stead is the Spirit of peace, and it is that spiritual peace that we most often think about when we think of what Jesus has brought to our lives.

But to get there, Jesus was going to have to be burned, be thrown into the pit. The First reading of Jeremiah today is often seen by Christians as a prophetic reading about Jesus. Like Jeremiah, Jesus had a tough message, and for that message he was thrown into a pit to die – and not just any pit, but a cistern. Now a cistern could be just a holding tank for water or it could be the place where  flushing toilets empty. In either case, there was only a muddy bottom in this particular cistern. At the end of the story, Jeremiah is raised from the cistern, though he is rescued before he dies. Jesus was not so lucky. Paul, in the Second Reading today from Hebrews refers to the Cross as Jesus’ shame – just as the cistern was Jeremiah’s shame.

Paul also refers to the hostility that Jesus suffered against himself from sinners. This is another reference to and example of the division that his message caused in that Hebrew society of Jesus’ day.

And, Paul seems to indicate that we too, in our own lives, will have cisterns, or pits of depths that we may have to fall into. He asks us when this happens in your lives, to remember Jesus and the hatred against him, so that “you may not grow weary or lose heart.”

And so, this is perhaps, a good lesson to take from today’s readings. We all have our troubles. Being human means having troubles, having ups and downs. How we react to those troubles is different for each of us, but from the readings today, we need to know first, that we are not alone – that Jesus suffered along with us… to the death – that his baptism of fire was like ours many times. He understands, he knows. He asks only that you put your faith in him, that you love him, and that you spread that loves to others. And if you do, you will be, in Paul’s words, running “with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And while this may not diminish the pits and cisterns in our lives, it will give us the strength to go on and know we are not alone in that suffering.  We can say like psalmist today: God “drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.” (Psalm 40.2)

And what a wonderful God it is who gives us the Good News that God understand us and  has suffered the same pits in life as we, because God has lived our human life through Jesus. This then is the wonderful, peace provoking Good News.