Daily Gospel Reflection for August 7, 2020

Join us as we reflect, ponder, and pray together inspired by today's Gospel.

Today's Gospel: Matthew 16:24-28

“What can you give in exchange for your life?” Jesus asks in today’s Gospel.

The lead up to this passage seems very straightforward. Many people ask Jesus for some kind of sign. It’s as if they are asking Jesus, “Can you dumb it down?” Is there a hashtag or a link I can just click on? And Jesus emphatically tells them there will be no sign, except that of Jonah. (I doubt that cleared things up).

But following this exchange, Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, “Who do you say that I am?” It’s as if He and they have processed the exchange with the crowd and now He is quizzing them saying, “Well, what do you think now?” And somehow, Peter, son of Jonah (is that a sign?) comes to confess Jesus as Messiah.

On this day, which is both my maternal grandmother’s birthday and my parents’ wedding anniversary, I am struck by the phrase, “What can you give in exchange for your life?”

My grandmother is no longer alive. In her end times, she refused surgery to remove a dying limb because she wanted to keep her body whole. At the same time, my parents' marriage is a joining of two into one. Or more precisely, the two become one through the sign and sacrament of marriage. The two and the love between them are three in one.

There is really nothing we can exchange with our Creator for the totality of our lives. Yet our Creator constantly exchanges the fullness of redemption and the offer of salvation for our shortcomings. In sign and sacrament, God completes and perfects us.

There is really nothing we can exchange with our Creator for the totality of our lives. Yet our Creator constantly exchanges the offer of salvation for our shortcomings. #dailygospel

Ponder:

Who do you say that Christ is in your life now, on this day?

Pray:

Thank you Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the family who begat my own existence.

Copyright 2020 Jay Cuasay