Jer 20:7-9 / Rom 12:1-2 / Mt 16:21-27
1 I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. 2 Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Rom 12:1-2
I am a fan of Clint Eastwood movies whether he is the director or the star actor, or both, or whether it's Spaghetti Western or his more recent stuff. They aren’t all family friendly, but I really enjoy his movies. He is usually the same type of character, this rough around the edges hero. I think one of the reasons I like this is because it's real, it's more human. He has no real superpowers. Other than maybe a little more courage than the average person, Eastwood’s characters are no different from you or me.
One of his new movies that I enjoyed is Gran Torino. It is not so new anymore, but for those who haven't seen it, a 30 second synopsis, and if you were planning to watch it, close your ears. Eastwood plays a hardened veteran of the Korean war. He had lost his wife... and his neighborhood was transitioning from all white to all Asian. One of the new neighbor boys tried to steal his Gran Torino but Walt, Eastwood’s character, caught him.
Over the course of the movie the two become rather close friends, all the while the kid was being bullied and pestered by a local gang who had been able to avoid being prosecuted for any of their many crimes.
In one of the last scenes, Walt showed up to the gang house at night and allowed the gang to kill him while the whole neighborhood looked on, which led to the gang being convicted. Throughout the movie, we can watch as Walt’s heart is softened, and eventually he offers himself as sacrifice... and as he falls to the ground, his arms come out and he falls into this position of Christ crucified. It's a wonderful image for us of Christ’s conquest over sin. Jesus, the messiah died...It seemed that the devil had won, but little did he know, the sacrifice that Christ made…was his victory. We have been saved, the war has been won.
St. Paul tells us today “I urge you brothers and sisters, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”
It's not a perfect analogy, but we also find in this character, Walt, all of us, we find our potential...yeah, we are all a bit rough around the edges, no one is perfect, yet… but we all have the ability to lay down our life for a friend. Perhaps to the extreme, but more likely than not, it's those smaller sacrifices that we are called to or in simply taking up our own crosses.
All of us also have the potential to offer our lives as a sacrifice to God. Every day in the Mass we have the offertory, and now we are using the basket again on Sundays, so we throw a few bucks in… but that's not it...we are called to place on this altar our very selves… as broken and sinful and imperfect as we are… that's the sacrifice we offer... Yes, the sacrifice we offer, our own lives. That's not a perfect sacrifice, and it's not always a holy sacrifice, sometimes its a real struggle to lay it down on the altar...we can be embarrassed or afraid… That's precisely what our Lord desires… he desires us as we are to offer him our lives so that he can heal us..so that he can make us holy… so that he can make of us a perfect sacrifice…
This is the journey to sainthood, this was the journey of Clint Eastwood’s character… Imperfect to say the least, foul mouthed, violent, and self isolating… but little by little he had small conversions… he cleaned up his act, he realized that violence would not solve anything, and eventually instead of self-isolating he became self-sacrificing.
Each time we unite our small imperfect sacrifice to the sacrifice Our Lord made on cavalry, we are molded more and more closely into the image of Christ… Let us pray that our participation in this Eucharist today might give us the courage to continually offer ourselves to the Lord, to unite the sacrifice of our own lives to his sacrifice on Calvary that we might be made holy.