Reflection for 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – A

It is a saying in our country that there are two things that we must do: pay taxes and die. However today’s three readings tell us that we must do more than that.

In our first reading the prophet Jeremiah tells us that people laughed at him and his message to the point that he cries. However, we know that Jeremiah spread God’s message anyway. He came to that point of crying and had a choice by his free will, he chose to proclaim God’s message to please God.

In our Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples and us that whoever wishes to come after him must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow him.

True, God gave us free will, but if we want to follow Jesus and His message, we have no choice but to deny many of our pleasures, or life that is accepted by our society, life that in many ways is against God’s commandments.

Plainly Jesus tells us: “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” He plainly tells us that in order to achieve heavenly life we must in many ways lose our earthly desire that goes against God’s teachings.
And we know how hard it is to follow that teaching during our daily life; we see and hear people laughing at us when we follow God’s commandments, when we follow Jesus’ teachings.

When those things happen, remember Jeremiah and how the society rejected him.

Remember Jesus. He was rejected and crucified because he did not fit to the society of His time.

Remember all the apostles and saints that were ridiculed for God’s sake. Now is our turn to make the right choice and to deny ourselves for Jesus.