Word of the day

IS 6:1-8

In the year King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne,
with the train of his garment filling the temple.
Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings:
with two they veiled their faces,
with two they veiled their feet,
and with two they hovered aloft.

They cried one to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!
All the earth is filled with his glory!”
At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook
and the house was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

He touched my mouth with it and said,
“See, now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
“Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

MT 10:24-33

Jesus said to his Apostles:
“No disciple is above his teacher,
no slave above his master.
It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher,
for the slave that he become like his master.
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul,
how much more those of his household!

“Therefore do not be afraid of them.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;
what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. This, he tells the disciples, is the very path of your freedom, this is the path of the Messiah, of the righteous one.
God’s love is so great, sin is so bad that he saves us this way, with this identity in the cross.
After all, one cannot understand Jesus Christ the Redeemer without the Cross. And, we can go so far as to think that he is a great prophet, he does good things, he is a saint. But Christ the Redeemer cannot be understood without the Cross. However, the hearts of the disciples, the hearts of the people were not prepared to understand this: they had not understood the prophecies, they had not understood that he was truly the sacrificial lamb. They were not prepared.
In essence, he prepares us to be Cyrenes in order to help him carry the cross. Such that without this, our Christian life is not Christian. It is only a spiritual, good life; and Jesus himself becomes only the great prophet. Reality is different: Jesus has saved us. Thus, our identity as Christians must also be protected. And one must not fall into the temptation of believing that to be a Christian is a merit, it is a spiritual journey of perfection: it is not a merit, it is pure grace. (Santa Marta, September 26, 2014)