God Had A Plan

God had a plan.  The plan was elaborate and complicated and took years to complete.  After hundreds of years in which God gathered a people, established them as a nation, adopted them as his own, saw them stray from their commitment, sent one prophet after another to call them back, God sent Jesus to complete the plan.  Over the past week, we have celebrated those event which brought God’s plan to completion.

We know the plan.  We have had hundreds of years to think about it, to reflect on it, to write about it, to preach about it and to teach others what God had planned for us. 

However, let us place ourselves in the shoes or sandals of the apostles and disciples of Jesus.  When they witnessed the events which brought God’s plan to completion, they could not have understood what God was doing.  It took a long time for the church to come to the realization that the humiliating and horrific death that Jesus endured was all part of a plan – that God actually intended that Jesus should be crucified and executed as a common criminal.  The shame of that death would have been overwhelming for them.

So when we hear Peter proclaim that Jesus was delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, we are actually hearing the conclusions that the early Christian community has reached after years of prayer and reflection on those terrible events.  St. Luke places those words in the mouth of St. Peter, words that must have struck like a lightning bolt in the minds of those people.  God actually willed that Jesus should die for our sins. 

However, the plan did not stop there.  The Gospel reading for today tells us that now that the plan has been completed, our task is to go and to tell others about the plan, to make God’s plan known.  We are part of that plan.  Lest we think that this part of the plan will be easy, St. Matthew tells us that there are those who plot to keep knowledge of the plan a secret.  Their plan is to ignore God’s intentions. 

The Scripture is clear.  We can choose to be among those who proclaim the message of God’s plan of salvation, or we can join those who would plot to discredit God’s plan.  The choice is ours. 

Our liturgy reminds us of the task: We proclaim your death and profess your resurrection until you come again.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator