Daily Gospel Reflection
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August 5, 2022
Jesus said to his disciples,
“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 will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay each according to his conduct.
Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here
who will not taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”
Reflection
Today’s gospel reads a tad dark coming from the Light of the World: deny yourself, lose your life, repay each, taste death. The narrative seemingly revolves around death from the one sent to give life, but we know that Jesus loves to teach in contradictions.
One kind of death the Lord is revealing here is an end to and denial of our preconceptions of who the Messiah is and what he has come to do.
This passage comes right after Peter’s great confession in response to Jesus asking, “But who do you say that I am?” You might recall Peter’s reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus says: “Blessed are you, Simon . . . for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 16:15-17)
Notice that Jesus asks Peter, “who do you say that I am,” not “who do you think I am.” These are two very different questions. The latter depends on Peter’s conception of who the Messiah should be. The former presupposes the death and denial of Peter’s constructed ideas of who Jesus is.
In asking, “who do you say that I am,” Jesus is asking Peter for a response made possible only by a posture of receiving what has been generously and gratuitously revealed to him in love, not to invent the answer using his limited faculties or information from the world around him.
It is startling to consider that the typical human posture now is insulating. Our heads and hearts are bent, perpetually curled over our devices, taking in all that the digitally constructed world has to offer and allowing ourselves to be formed by it. How might we begin to shift our posture to one of openness, to lift our eyes from our screens to the heavens, and, like Peter, lose our lives to save them?
Prayer
God of all wisdom and grace, you call us to proclaim the truth of our faith wherever your Spirit leads us. Give us courage and determination to follow your Son, even to the cross. May our lives reflect your radiance as you lead us into your promise of everlasting life. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Rome is home to the four most important church buildings in Catholicism. The first is St. Peter’s Basilica, located in the Vatican. The other three are the Basilica of St. John Lateran, where the Pope serves as bishop of Rome; the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which houses the tomb of the apostle Paul; and the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
The Church honors these four churches in the liturgical year because they are pilgrimage sites and they connect all the faithful with the Pope and the universal Church. The Basilica of St. Mary Major is so called because it is the oldest church dedicated to God in honor of Mary. It serves the Church as the oldest Marian shrine for pilgrims.
The origins of this Basilica are wrapped in legend. Two Roman Christians, a Roman official named John and his wife, received a vision from Mary in 358. They were childless and wanted to dedicate their estate to Mary, so they prayed to her for a sign as to how this should be done. She appeared to them both in dreams and told them that a prominent hill in the city would be covered with snow, and this is where they should build a church.
John immediately told the Pope, who had the same dream, and they went to the hill to find it covered in snow on this date, during the hottest time of the year. The pope then walked through the snow to mark out the outline of the church that was to be built there.
This story probably cannot be trusted, but it is the origin of one of Mary’s titles, Our Lady of the Snow. The church building was originally the palace of a prominent family before being transformed into a church in the 300s. Later it was restored and consecrated to Mary after the Council of Ephesus in 432, where the Church came to understand and proclaim Mary as the Mother of God. It was decorated with artwork depicting Mary and Jesus, and a relic from the manger in Bethlehem was used in a reconstruction of the nativity there.
On this feast day in the Basilica in Rome, flower petals are dropped from the ceiling to recall the legend of Our Lady of the Snow. The Basilica of St. Mary Major is also the site of an important commemoration of Christmas in Rome because of its famous nativity scene.
Notre Dame’s own Basilica of the Sacred Heart contains relics from the nativity as well—pieces of the manger that held Jesus, and parts of the cloth in which he was swaddled.
On this feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, let us honor Mary as the Mother of God!
Image Credit: Our featured image of the Basilica of Mary Major is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Last accessed March 28, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
