- First Reading: Nah 2:1, 3; 3:1–3, 6–7
- Responsorial Psalm: Deut 32:35cd–36ab, 39abcd, 41
- Gospel: Matt 16:24–28
The phrases “come after me” and “follow me” struck me this morning as I reflected on this Gospel passage. I have to give our translators credit: “come after me” is very close to what the Lord is actually saying. Yet I don’t think we always stop to consider what that phrase means.
In modern English, “Come after me” can sound negative or confrontational—as though someone were saying, “Let’s fight. Come after me!” But the Lord is not inviting us to a wrestling match. He is speaking physically: follow him. The expression uses two different words, a verb and an adverb. The verb means to move in a direction; the adverb means after or behind.
To come after Christ, then, is to move continually toward him while remaining behind him. He is inviting us to take up the physical position of a disciple: following him and always remaining behind him. That is what it truly means to follow someone.
This matters because whenever we look at an image of the Lord—even at the cross before us—we are looking at him from the front. Yet the position to which he invites us is behind him, continually following him.
That has consequences for our lives. If we truly follow the Lord in this way and approach another person, whom are they meant to see? They are meant to see the Lord himself, because he is in front of us.
Ultimately, this is what it means to be a Christian: to follow Christ continually, so that he is always before us. Then, when someone looks to us, they do not see only us; they see the Lord himself. That is the standard to which he calls us: to present his image to others rather than our own.
Of course, we fail at this. I think most people would say, “I definitely see that person and not Jesus.” But this is the work we have to do: to make sure that, as we follow Christ, he truly remains ahead of us. He is the one leading us and going before us; he is the one others see, because he is the one we are trying to draw them to.
So it is good sometimes, despite constantly looking at Christ from the front, to imagine ourselves looking at him from behind. We can imagine ourselves following him and ask: What do I need to change so that it is apparent to everyone that Christ is in front of me? What must change so that, when others look at me, they see him first? Then we can begin making those changes in our lives.
In every encounter we have in this world, we are meant to present Christ himself. We are meant to show others the one who is calling them and to invite them, too, to eternal life in his Kingdom.