Making A Name For Ourselves Fails The Test Of Joy

Friday of the Sixth Week in Course 2025

“Let’s make a name for ourselves” hints that the first reading, from Genesis, is really talking about the results of human pride. Migrating people from the far reaches of Asia are imagined coming together in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That’s modern-day Iraq. They learn how to make bricks out of fire-baked clay and lay them together with some kind of tar as a bonding agent. The Israelites who inherited Torah, the first five books of the Bible, encountered cultures like this, especially when they were driven out of the Holy Land and enslaved in Babylon. They knew cities, big cities, with high buildings made in this way. And they knew people with that kind of proud mindset. It’s always a temptation, isn’t it, to think bigger is better? We have a tendency to believe our own publicity, and feel best about ourselves when we own the deeds to lots of properties. But that is not the way to happiness and often is actually the path to misery.

Today’s Gospel account follows up on yesterday’s from earlier in this chapter of Mark. That last passage holds Peter’s testimony that Jesus is the Messiah, and Christ’s followup dialogue with Peter when Jesus began to teach the disciples about His mission to hand himself over to the authorities, who would kill Him. Peter remonstrated that no such thing would happen to Jesus. Jesus calls Peter an adversary—Satana—and rebukes him for trying to get in the way of the Father’s plan of redemption.

Today’s Gospel finds Jesus “doubling down” on His prediction of His own passion and death and resurrection by telling His listeners “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.” Jesus would go willingly to die on the cross, and each of us must be willing to follow Him even that far.

Of course we know the end of the story. Jesus does turn Himself over to the authorities, and He is crucified, died and buried. Then, on the third day He proved Himself free from corruption by rising in a brand-new, glorified, spiritual body. He showed Himself to His disciples, who became witnesses to those wonderful events. Moreover, the vast majority of them were willing to die themselves, some in horrible torments, rather than deny what they knew to be true: Christ is risen and wants us to rise with Him.

Don’t ignore the last words of Jesus today: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." That leads into the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, when Peter, James and John did see a preview of Jesus in His power and glory, along with the OT prophets Moses and Elijah.

If we are willing to believe Jesus, teaching us through the Church’s witness, we can be certain that, as the psalmist reminds us, God is the One who sees all the inhabitants of the earth, fashions our hearts and observes all our deeds. Through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, He gives us everything we need, including, through faith and good deeds, glorification and union with the Blessed Trinity.