Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A (2026) - Fr Robert Krishna, OP

Today’s psalm, Psalm 62, contains a beautiful description of the total love and dedication that the psalmist has for God. The psalmist says his very soul thirsts for God. He looks eagerly to see God. God’s love is better than life. Today’s opening prayer also speaks about love for the name of God. Things like this make life in God seem deeply attractive.

What a shock then to turn to our first reading from the prophet, Jeremiah, to see a very different kind of profession of love for God! In Jeremiah, that love has turned tragic, even mad. Jeremiah speaks as an abandoned, desolate, lover: “You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced,” he says. God has tricked him, left him open to insult and derision, mocking and laughter. But his love won’t let him stop speaking about God. Jeremiah’s complaint rudely reminds us that following God has a cost, sometimes a steep cost indeed.

Being Christians in our day also carries a cost. For as long as Christ is a mere idea, this is fine. But the moment he begins to make demands of us and how we live our life, the Gospel becomes a challenge, a struggle to live. And on top of that, it exposes us to insult and misunderstanding, often even from people within the Church, and sometimes from within our own hearts. If we stand up for economic justice, for the rights of the workers to fair pay, or the rights of the poor to the necessities of life, we’re tagged as socialists. If we stand up to protect life from the womb to the tomb by objecting to abortion or euthanasia or unjust wars, or the slavery and exclusion that kills many and keeps our comfortable world afloat, we’re accused of being heartless or being bleeding hearts, cruel, or unrealistic. If we stand up for the teachings of the Church on sexuality as difficult but still liveable, then we’re boxed in as bigots. Even if we say we merely believe in God and take him seriously in their lives, we can often meet incredulity and sneering. These attitudes are understandable because of the past or present bad example of Christians, and because of the difficulty of living the teachings of the Church. So, we may complain with Jeremiah, that we struggle to live his law, and we face rejection and mockery as we stand by his teaching.

Today’s Gospel answers that in Jesus, God himself enters into the sufferings that come with trying to live his will fully, as well as the suffering and rejection Jeremiah complains about. He undergoes grievous suffering and is rejected by his own people. He will even undergo the worst and most shameful kind of death that the Roman world had to inflict: he was spat on, and tortured. He would be crucified and left to be ridiculed by every passer-by. And he would finally die, even entering into the anguish of human desolation, the human cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He who remained always united to the Father shared our human desolation. You can understand Peter’s utter horror at what Jesus is saying. Peter himself has just made the affirmation we heard in last week’s Gospel: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” How then can God hand over his own Son, true God of true God, as we say in the Creed every Sunday, to that kind of shameful, painful desolation and death? But Jesus is not having any of Peter’s objection: This is what I must undergo, he says, because this is the will of God. Jesus is God entering the condition of Jeremiah, entering the condition of all those who remain faithful to him in the face of great difficulty and ridicule. God himself enters and expresses, in his own suffering and death, the feeling of utter desolation that is the lot of those who are truly virtuous in our world. And he continues: this is what all who wish to follow him must also be prepared for, if we want life with him, if we wish to enter into his love for the Father.

This is the challenge Jesus puts before us: you say you wish to enter into that kind of relationship of love which the psalmist spoke about. Be prepared to stand with me as I have stood with you. This is a big ask. Whatever we might say here and now, we know that, when Mass ends and we once again encounter the world, we will be faced by a thousand temptations and difficulties. If we are to navigate those difficulties, we need to remain close to Christ. And Christ remains close to us. He remains close to us, not just in the sacraments, which many find hard or impossible to access at this time. He remains close to us in prayer, in the reading of the Scriptures, in the teaching of the Church, and in the support and the sufferings of our neighbours offering us help in our need, or calling out for our help in theirs. Whatever our situation in life, Christ remains close to us. Trusting then in Christ who shares our suffering and death, let us resolve to remain loyal to the Christ we receive, and to the teachings of his Church, for whom he laid down his life.

Fr Robert Krishna, OP teaches Biblical Studies at Holy Name of Mary Seminary, Honiara, Solomon Islands and is currently assigned to St Laurence's Priory, North Adelaide, South Australia.