What will there be for us?

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Peter asks the best question in today’s Gospel. He said to Jesus: “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” When I read that, I thought to myself, "That is the equivalent of saying, 'What are we going to get out following you?'"

This past Sunday, during our first Called to be One Marriage Class at Saint Albert the Great, I asked the couples to complete this statement: "My HOPE for our marriage is ______. (Not desires, not expectations, not goals BUT HOPE.)" I did not want them to think with their emotions (desires) or their minds (expectations and goals) but with their hearts and eyes directed at Christ. The couples who shared hit the nail on the head when they said that their HOPE is to get each other to Heaven.

I then shared with them from CCC 1817: "Hope is. . . by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. . . [Hope] keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during timesnof abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude."

Therefore, the answer to Peter’s question - "We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?" - is hope of eternal life with our Father in heaven.

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Gospel of the Day

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich
to enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Again I say to you,
it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said,
“Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For men this is impossible,
but for God all things are possible.”
Then Peter said to him in reply,
“We have given up everything and followed you.
What will there be for us?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you
that you who have followed me, in the new age,
when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory,
will yourselves sit on twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters
or father or mother or children or lands
for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more,
and will inherit eternal life.
But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”