8/30/20: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Seeing our Suffering as God Sees It

In today's Gospel we see Peter's humanity in his inability to accept that Jesus must suffer. (This is all the more interesting and important considering that immediately before this Peter confesses his faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God and is then called the "rock" on which the Church of Jesus will be built.) Jesus responds to Peter's refusal to accept the suffering of the Messiah with the words, "You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does but as human beings do." This reminds us that we can't judge Peter, because we tend to think -- like Peter -- that suffering and death is the worst thing. This is our perspective, but what is God's perspective? To him, suffering and death is not the world thing but a remedy for healing and part of the necessary path to eternal life.