26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
Jesus said “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”
Cutting off one’s hand or one’s foot or plucking out one’s eye sounds very gory, but it means that in order to attain the kingdom of heaven, we need to sacrifice or give up something. Jesus wants us to know the importance of sacrifice and the need to fight the temptations that come our way as His disciples. This gospel passage in fact reminds us that in order to attain eternal life, sacrifice is necessary, plus we have to stay away from those things or evil inclinations that tend to destroy our relationship with God.
What is Sacrifice? Sacrifice is the act of giving up something that is valuable to you in order to help someone else or to attain a higher goal. It is to suffer loss of something, give up something or renounce something especially for an ideal, a belief, or an end. The suffering and death of Christ is a perfect example of what true sacrifice is all about. Christ’s passion and death on a cross in fact explains the reason for His gory analogy of cutting off one’s hand or one’s foot or plucking out one’s eye in order to attain the kingdom of God as we heard in the gospel reading. This shows that by sacrificing, we are called to do that which might seem crazy, stupid, silly or extremely strange in the eyes of the world if we are to make it to heaven. So what have you sacrificed or what are you sacrificing in order to attain the kingdom of heaven? Sacrificing for the sake of the kingdom of God can entail separating ourselves from the things of the world, mortifying ourselves, praying more often, doing corporal works of mercy as well as spiritual works of mercy.
By urging us to cut off one’s hand or one’s foot or pluck out one’s eye in order to attain the kingdom of God, Jesus is also indirectly telling us to fight the temptations that come our way and that leads us to sin. Temptation, which is the desire to do something, especially something wrong, sinful or unwise, comes our way always and most times, trying to overcome us. In the words of Jesus in today’s gospel reading, He reminds us to cut off every and all temptations or things that will make us not attain the kingdom of heaven. So how do we deal with temptation or how do we fight the temptations that come our way? We can adhere to Jesus’s words to fight the temptations that come our way by: Staying away from and avoiding those things that tempt us or that lead us into temptation; by Praying when we are tempted especially praying ejaculatory prayers; and by Being consistent in fighting those temptations and not succumbing easily to them.
So my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we wish to attain heaven, we must be prepared to truly follow Christ by cutting off every and all things that will make us not attain the kingdom of heaven by resisting our evil inclinations. Then through sacrifice, give up things that are needed and that are dearest to our human nature and avoid the temptations of the devil.
