The Scandal of Sacrifice
Gospel Reflection for September 3, 2023 - Matthew 16:21-27
From that time Jesus began to shew to his disciples, that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the ancients and scribes and chief priests, and be put to death, and the third day rise again.
And Peter taking him, began to rebuke him, saying: Lord, be it far from thee, this shall not be unto thee.
Who turning, said to Peter: Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men.
Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.
For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?
For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels: and then will he render to every man according to his works. (Matthew 16:21-27 DRA)
For this Sunday’s Gospel reading, it is important to remember the immediate context: only last Sunday and just before this passage, we read Christ proclaim Simon as Peter, the first pope and the rock on whom the Church would be built. Now, in the very next passage, Peter is called Satan by Our Lord. Such a turnaround, with a sharp rebuke from Christ, must have shocked Peter, but only after denying Christ three times and seeing Him resurrected would Peter understand the true weight and meaning of this episode.
Why did Christ call Peter, one of His closest friends and the chief of His apostles, Satan? What scandal or obstacle did Peter commit which indicated that he followed the ways of the world instead of the Way of God?
For Peter, and for Christians throughout history, the greatest scandal, paradox and challenge of the Gospel is the sacrifice of the Cross. This sacrifice provides the template for our lives as disciples of Christ, and it is the one sacrifice, offered by Christ to the Father in the heavenly liturgy as our High Priest, the one propitiatory expiation and act of perfect charity which is re-presented at every Divine Liturgy in the Eucharist. As Christ commands, we are to follow the model of His sacrifice, taking up our own crosses of sin, temptation, pain and persecution; only by suffering like Him, that is, remaining faithful to God and keeping charity in our hearts through our afflictions, can we be transformed into His likeness. This, as St. Paul wrote in the Epistle, is how we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, united as members of the Body of Christ in His Eucharistic offering to the Father. Like Christ, through suffering we take on the curse of sin and overpower it by grace, changing curses into beatitudes and making death the means to resurrection.
Throughout the centuries, critics have accused Christians of a morbid fascination with pain and death, of keeping the poor and downtrodden in their afflictions, of hindering progress and dragging down people’s enjoyment of life with talk of sin and suffering. And yet, no other alternative to the Gospel has ever conquered death, opened Heaven and secured a joy which cannot be affected by worldly gain or loss. Denying suffering, distracting from it with gadgets and hedonistic pleasures, alleviating it with endless drugs and anti-aging concoctions or hoping for a paradise of worldly gratification through idolatrous or fanatical placation of the gods – none of these are ultimately effective. All depend upon human power and all are limited in vision – even if they procure the whole world, what profit is it, if sin and death still claim body and soul for all time? Only the Cross of Christ brings true and everlasting victory: “Of ourselves, we cannot construct the way to God. This way does not open up unless God Himself becomes the way. And again, the ways of man which do not lead to God are non-ways.” (Ratzinger)
How can we, like Peter, recover this sense of sacrifice in the Church today? It has been lost because people today, including Christians, avoid anything difficult or inconvenient, anything that is not given to them on a screen or from the government, that may require self-sacrifice or honest contemplation of unpleasant truths. Following the example of Martin Luther, who called the reality of sacrifice in the Mass "the greatest and most appalling horror" and a "damnable impiety", and rejecting the Council of Trent, many Catholics today even deny the sacrificial character of the Eucharist. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:
One can no longer imagine that human offences can wound God, and even less that they could necessitate an expiation such as that which constitutes the Cross of Christ. The same applies to vicarious substitution: we can hardly still imagine anything in that category – our image of man has become too individualistic for that. Thus the crisis of the liturgy has its basis in central ideas about man. In order to overcome it, it does not suffice to banalise the liturgy and transform it into a simple gathering at a fraternal meal.
Bereft of the Scriptural concept of sacrifice, Catholics today are left open to arbitrary customizations and popular fads in the Mass, emptying it of meaning and permanence: “Where, on the basis of such ideas, the liturgy is manipulated ever more freely, the faithful feel that, in reality, nothing is celebrated, and it is understandable that they desert the liturgy, and with it the Church.” (Ratzinger)
To correct this, sacrifice must be recovered and its true nature understood as an act of self-giving and prayerful love. True sacrifice is not inherently violent and destructive: it is loving. The violence and destruction sometimes involved in sacrifice, whether the animals of the Jewish Temple, Christ on the Cross, the crusaders or martyrs are all founded on love. The Eucharist is that which applies the merits of the sacrifice of the Cross to communicants, conforming us to Christ and enabling us to love others as He loves us. To do so, we must give until it hurts, as St. Teresa of Calcutta taught and exemplified; we must stand up for the truth, rather than accommodating the whims of the times and threatening the Deposit of the Faith with nefarious innovations; and we must love all without exception for God’s sake. Cardinal Ratzinger upheld as one of the greatest defenses of the sacrifice of the Mass the Traditional Latin Mass, citing its wondrous emphasis of sacrifice as one of the key reasons for its continued persecution. For this reason, preserving and celebrating the Extraordinary Form is one way by which we can rediscover the true meaning of loving sacrifice in the Church today:
It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the strongest, and thus (for them) the most intolerable contradiction of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist formulated by Trent has lost its value.
(Cover image source: https://shrinetower.com/2017/05/15/enamored-with-the-holy-mass-my-favorite-parts/)
Kaleb, you really helped me contemplate this Sunday's reflection. Great work.