😎🐫🎤 Christ’s peace be with you. Driving to 8:30 AM Mass Sunday morning, there was a very noticeable quietness about the morning, very peaceful. A few blocks further along the drive, I notice a yard sign referencing hate has no home here. Considering the quiet, peaceful morning and the sign’s message, my mind took off in its own direction. It struck me that while we sleep, we don’t hate. It’s only when we are awake, that hate enters back into the world. I then hear in the Gospel reading, Mark 8:27-35, Jesus asking the disciples who they think He is. Peter nailed it when he said “You are the Christ.” Jesus then tried to share with them some hard truths about events that would be happening in the not-too-distant future, concerning His death and resurrection. Peter did not want to hear that kind of talk, so he rebuked Jesus. I’m guessing it was a bit of confusion, disbelief, misunderstanding, and fear that caused Peter to lash out at Christ. Christ in turn rebuked Peter saying “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” I then thought back to the quiet, peaceful morning, the hate sign, and brought it together with the Gospel. Confusion, disbelief, misunderstanding, and fear mixed with thinking like a human, is a perfect recipe for hate.
To conclude Sunday’s Gospel reading, “He summoned the crowd with His disciples and said to them, “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 and that of the Gospel will save it.” The best thing we can do to help ourselves and eliminate any degree of hate in our lives is to do our best to quit relying on ourselves, our thoughts, and our ideas, to open ourselves to God’s thoughts and ideas. The next time you’re out in the world, while most of the world is still asleep, make sure to take note of how quiet and peaceful the world actually is. A line from a hymn we sang at Mass was “Only this I want: but to know the Lord…” Could you imagine the peace you would have in your life, in your spirit, if that was the desire of your heart, to only know the Lord.
If the Lord has touched you in some way with His message today, I ask that you pay it forward by sharing this message, so that you and He may also bless others. Click subscript to receive your message every Wednesday.
#ChrisBrunelle – Only This I Want by Dan Schutte
Third Day Devotions 