YEAR B: HOMILY FOR FRIDAY OF THE 25TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME (1)

YEAR B: HOMILY FOR FRIDAY OF THE 25TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

HOMILY THEME: WHO IS JESUS TO YOU?

BY: Fr. Benny Tuazon

HOMILY:

(Lk. 9:18-22) Friday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel Jesus inquires from His apostles how He was coming across at people. Jesus had been going around meeting people, preaching to everyone at every opportunity, and healing the sick. Was He being known correctly? When the survey said that He was like one of the prophets, Jesus turned to them and asked them who He was. Peter proclaimed that He was the Messiah, the one Israel was waiting for and would deliver them from the enemies. That said, Jesus confessed the kind of Messiah He will be by intimating His coming rejection, passion, death, and resurrection.

It was like being doused with cold water. Why will the Messiah die? How can He fulfill His mission if He is dead? Here, humanity was introduced to the ways of God and one vital truth of life. Death is not the end of life. God is not God of the dead but of the living. Jesus will resurrect to show us the way to salvation and eternal life. He was revealing the very foundation of being a creature and child of God. Life still has meaning even with suffering and death. Later, Peter will promise Jesus that He would not let others harm Him. And Jesus rebuked Him by going against the Will of the Father. Indeed, man, no matter how intelligent and wise, is a fool before God’s foolishness. We can question God’s will in search for understanding. But we must still follow in trust for it is always what is right and moral. God, in Jesus our Lord, had proven Himself on this.

Like Mary, who herself followed God’s will and witnessed to this when her Son suffered and died before her eyes and in the hands of the elders and Romans, we must humbly believe and trust in God’s holy will. More than our limited will, God’s divine will prevails and surpasses.

Who, again, is the Lord Jesus? He is our savior who followed His Father’s will. As His followers, we imbibe His absolute obedience to the Father.