22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
September 3, 2023

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

This weekend we are celebrating especially because every year, as you probably know, at the beginning of the month, on September first, we celebrate the Feast of St. Vibiana, patron saint of the archdiocese. And on September second, we celebrate the dedication of our cathedral.

So today we especially give thanks to God for all the blessings that we have received in the archdiocese through the intercession of St. Vibiana and the ministry of our cathedral. As you also know, we have the relics of St. Vibiana downstairs at the side of the St. Vibiana Chapel. So it is always good to ask the intercession of St. Vibiana, patroness of the archdiocese.

It is also labor day weekend, so let us give thanks to God for the gift of work and pray for our brothers and sisters in our country that need a job and for the courage to build a world in which God’s gifts are better shared.

In the readings that we just heard, I suppose we can understand are challenging. In the passage of the Gospel, we just heard St. Peter who had an interesting dialogue with Jesus.

Jesus is telling St. Peter and the other apostles, for the first time, that he has to go to Jerusalem, where he is going to suffer and be killed. And St. Peter protests.

As we heard, he says: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

St. Peter loved Jesus and he doesn’t want to see Jesus get hurt. But he doesn’t really realize what he is saying. He’s basically asking Jesus to save himself. He’s trying to talk Jesus out of the cross, trying to talk him out of doing God’s will.

So Jesus tells him: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

My brothers and sisters, it is our human nature to be afraid of pain and to want to avoid suffering. We want that also for the people that we love. But sometimes, God allows sorrow and hardship in our lives.

So the question for us is: How are we going to respond? What are we going to do with the suffering that comes to us?

And that’s what Jesus is teaching St. Peter in our Gospel this morning. The lesson is this: God has a plan. God has a plan for our lives — for your life, for my life. And a plan for the whole world.

In God’s plan, Jesus must allow himself to suffer and die on the cross. And by losing his life, Jesus gives us new life, eternal life to all of us.

So we have to trust in God’s plan, trust that he’s in charge of history and our own lives.

And we also have to carry out God’s plan and conform ourselves to God’s will for our lives.

You know, sometimes it is difficult for us to understand the meaning of suffering or sickness. Sometimes it’s impossible for us to see God’s purposes. We all have challenges, crosses in our lives.

That’s what Jesus is telling us today in the Gospel. He tells us: “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself, pick up his cross, and come after me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it.”

They are challenging words, but there is something beautiful about the challenge that Jesus gives to us.

We carry our crosses, but we don’t carry our crosses alone. We are walking with Jesus. We are carrying our crosses with him, and we are all following Jesus together. All of us. We are walking with one another in the Church, with our brothers and sisters.

It is a beautiful solidarity, a beautiful communion that we have in the Church. We are a family — all of us brothers and sisters. This is why the Church is so active and does so much good in our community — helping people, lifting people up, promoting human dignity and social justice.

We are here to pray for one another, to help one another, to bear one another’s burdens.

So, Jesus is telling us to carry our cross with him and to carry our cross with love, just as he did.

Jesus lost his life so that we could find our lives, and we could have eternal life, as he is calling us to open our lives to God also, out of love.

St. Paul says in the second reading that we just heard:

St. Paul says, in the second reading that we just heard that we need a whole new way of thinking. He said: “… be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God.”

So my dear brothers and sisters, God’s will for us is simple and it is beautiful.

God wants each of us to be holy, to become a saint. And the way to do that, as we know, is following Jesus by carrying our cross in love with him.

St. Paul also says: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.”

This is the way to live — to do everything for love. To make our lives something  beautiful that we offer in love, for the good of other people, for the glory of God.

By our love and sacrifice, we give life and love to other people.

So today, let us renew our love for Jesus and our desire to share his Gospel with everyone in our lives and in our world.

And may our Blessed Mother Mary, who followed Jesus to the foot of the cross, help us to take up our cross and follow her Son. And may she help us to embrace the challenges and suffering in our lives with love.