I can only imagine being there with Jesus and the disciples as Jesus is explaining what’s going to happen in just the short while. He’s telling them that he who they’ve been following and being nurtured by and learning from, that he, their friend and companion, that he, Jesus, is going to be tortured and going to be killed. I can’t imagine that was easy at all for the disciples to hear that story, to hear that prediction of what’s to come. I’m sure they were deeply, deeply distressed. Jesus is sharing very clearly the cross he is to pick up, to take, and the cross that he’ll be nailed to.

Jesus said to His disciples also that they must pick up their cross. They must, in many ways, we could say, sacrifice, that they’re called to sacrifice as well. We hear for Peter that way of sacrificing, or that way of changing his own life, comes very quickly for what he thinks is not what Jesus asks him to think. Think the way God thinks, not the way humans think. And so his cross is thinking, Peter’s cross is thinking in a different way, in a different manner. Peter picks up his cross, has to think differently what’s to come for his friend Jesus.

We are also invited very clearly by the Gospel to pick up our cross, which means sacrifice, which means sacrifice all for Christ Jesus. We give up an hour of our week every Sunday to come together and worship and praise with our sisters and brothers. That is a wonderful sacrifice that we offer. We sacrifice for our family members, for our husbands, for our wives. We sacrifice for our children. Jesus’s invitation to us is, in His name, take up the cross to follow Him very specifically. And that’s going to entail sacrifice. It did for Jesus, it did for His disciples, and it does for us.

A quick story. I had the opportunity to travel with my brother and his daughter, and she’s 15, and I gave up some of my vacation time to go with them, and you know, I thought to myself, I really want to do this, but I know that being with a teenager is going to be being with a teenager, but I wanted to go. I really wanted to go, but I’ll tell you, my heart wasn’t 100%. And so I found that first, that first day of the trip, the first day, there’s this internal struggle. I wanted to be there, but there was also the challenge of, I could be with my priest friends someplace else, and I wasn’t fully there. I wasn’t fully present, and I kind of exploded. I had to apologize later because I wanted to be there, but my heart was not behind the sacrifice, was not behind the journey, was not behind the vacation. So ultimately I got there, but I want to invite us to think about our sacrifice, our taking up the cross. Is our heart truly there? Are we there, or is our mind or is our desire someplace else? Because taking up the cross means that we’re all in. We’re all in. And not, you know, not in some kind of bombastic or pompous way, or not in some kind of a saccharine way, or not in some kind of a self-righteous way. No, as the second reading that Matt read for us so beautifully says, do so lovingly and generously and compassionately and beautifully. How do we, with our own hearts and lives, follow Christ Jesus, pick up our cross, which means entering into sacrifice, and then walking with Christ Jesus with a full and natural and beautiful heart, finding that balance that Jesus asks us to find.

The invitation. First of all, Jesus showed us what sacrifice looks like. It was a powerful sacrifice. The disciples experienced that sacrifice as well. And so do we. In the little things and the big things, we pick up our cross, enter into sacrificial love with Christ Jesus in a balanced, beautiful way. Thank you for the way that you do that.