“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”
Our Nation recently and most fittingly celebrated the passing of a civil rights icon, Representative John Lewis. His entire life embodied the challenging message that we hear in today’s Gospel taken from Matthew. For, you see, he ultimately found his deepest meaning and identity, not in amassing worldly riches and narcissistic fame, but rather in risking his very life in his passionate and unfailing commitment to the righteous cause that all peoples are created equal and are beloved children of God.
In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In an incident which became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers and police then attacked the marchers, including Lewis. Prior to the march on Bloody Sunday, and knowing full well that he would be undoubtedly attacked and jailed, he carried in his backpack the spiritual autobiography of Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain. Merton was an agnostic who in the course of his life, encountered the Lord, not unlike Jeremiah the Prophet of today’s first reading, and was seduced by the Lord’s love and gave up everything to follow him as a Trappist monk.
As Jeremiah, the Lord continues to raise up modern-day Prophets to speak the inconvenient truths to a world and Nation that can so easily forget its essential call to moral greatness. For, to be a Prophet of moral greatness in our world today will necessarily involve the rejection and ridicule that all Prophets have endured down through the centuries. To be a Prophet of moral greatness is to be willing to raise our voice against the cultic fanaticism that looks to fallible human beings for our ultimate salvation rather than in the Lord of life, mercy and unending compassion.
As we greet a new week with its inevitable joys and challenges, let us pray to the Spirit of life and love, that our hearts will be open to the power that the Holy Spirit gives as a gift of our faith, to be modern-day Prophets of moral greatness to our families, communities, Nation and world.