12th Sunday in ordinary time-C
Good morning/evening every one, I am so happy to welcome you all for today’s Holy Mass. Our special welcome to all our parishioners, cottagers, visitors and every one here today. Dear friends, every time we come to church, we are blessed to join the apostles and say, ‘Jesus, you are the only Son of God and Savior”. Every time we come here, we praise and glorify Christ and say, “Jesus, you are the beginning and End and because of you, we live, move and have our being. Dear friends, every time we come to Church, we are given enough grace to take up the cross and follow the Lord.
Once after reading this exact gospel, a bishop looked at people and said, “Now I am going to bless you all with your crosses. So please life your crosses up, thinking that they were going to lift their pain, suffering and challenges up but instead, they all lifted up their spouses”.
In today’s gospel, Jesus our Lord says, if you want to become my disciple, renounce or deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me”
Once a man who was really suffering because his cross, continued to pray to God saying, “God, please kindly take this cross away from me. you may give any cross except this one. His prayers went on for many months and then one day, God appeared to him saying, “ My child, I heard your prayer and I am going to remove your cross and I am also going to let you choose your own cross”. He then took him to a big place where he was so many crosses, big and small, heavy and light. He looked at all the crosses but he did not like anything at all. he then finally looked at a little beautiful cross in a corner and he right away grabbed that one saying, “Dear God, please let me have this one. I will be so satisfied with this little cross”. God said, “Of course my son, you can have this little cross”. As he was walking out with that beautiful little cross, God said, ’Son by the way, you should know that this is the cross, you were all along crossing”. Then God said, “I will never give you anything that you can not carry”.
That is our God. He loves us unconditionally and fills us all with more strength and courage.
And in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, If we want to become His disciples, we should deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him.
1. Becoming His disciple means, investing more time to know the invisible. It is going beyond reality. We are so limited with what we see and understand. But as disciples of Christ we are so blessed to know the invisible through visible that is Christ our Lord. He was an ordinary human person like you and me and taught us how to surpass visible things and connect ourselves with invisible and heavenly things. we should sit at His feet and listen to His divine words as Mary did. people criticized her for sitting at His feet and listening. Even her own sister came to Jesus and said, “Jesus, tell my sister to help me. she is just sitting at your feet and listening to what you are saying’. She is not active but passive. She is not productive but useless. And Christ our Lord, looked at her and said, “Martha...Martha... you are busy and anxious and you are worried about so many world things but look at your sister Mary. She has chosen the best part and that will never be taken away from her. Becoming a disciple of Christ means, just sitting at His feet and listening.
Jesus says if you want to become my disciple, deny yourself .
It means denying your human nature and hold on to your new self. As Christ died on the Cross for our sins, we became new in Christ. We are God’s children. we should let the old self go. We should replace our old angers with new acceptance; we should replace our hated with love and forgiveness. Denying oneself means having courage to let our anxiety and stress go and embrace with peace and harmony.
Jesus our Lord asks us to take up our cross and follow Him.
A disciple is the one who reflects the Master and by seeing the disciple, the world will come to know the Master. if we are to be disciples of Christ, then we have to like our Master should carry our crosses, not for our own welfare but for the sake of others and for our community. As we carry the cross, then we will begin to have a deeper spiritual experiences and join the apostles and say, “Jesus, you are the only son of God. you are the beginning and end. with you, everything becomes possible.
Therefore let us deny ourselves and carry our crosses and follow Christ our Lord. Amen.
