Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Czech theologian Tomas Halik says, “If we never had the feeling that what Jesus wants of us is absurd, crazy, and impossible, then we’ve probably either been too hasty in taming or diluting the radical nature of his teaching with soothing intellectualizing interpretations, or have too easily forgotten to what extent our thinking, customs, and actions rooted ‘in this world.’”  Jesus offers “God’s thinking,” the thinking by which we save our lives by losing them and build a kingdom whose divine power is seen as human weakness.