August 23, 2020: The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.


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Dearest Jesus,

In today’s Gospel You ask us, Your disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

Certainly, You are the Christ — the Messiah, our Savior — the Son of the living God! But in all honesty, this reality is not something I am always aware of nor something I am always able to proclaim. So often do I have false views of who You actually are, Jesus. So often do the wounds and traumas of my life get in the way of seeing You as an all-loving God, and way too often do my limitations get in the way of seeing You in Your perfect beauty. In times of crisis in the world, it is so easy to see You as One that has abandoned us, forgotten us, and left us to fend for ourselves.

I know that You are truly the Christ, my loving Savior. You are not some unexplained force of nature or Lord of abandonment. You are a personal God that has not and will never abandon His children here on Earth. You have given Your people Your very life — which demands a personal response from me. To know you intimately, God, is to truly live! You invite me to surrender everything to You and to trust wholeheartedly in You. You call me to relationship. Please Jesus, may my desire to grow in relationship with You lead me to come to know the truth of Your identity.

I know that You are always drawing close to me. I know that you are not embarrassed of me. Your heart is for me. You desire to gather me and all of the limitations in my life — to gather them and to integrate them into Your own Sacred Heart, to bring me into Your own beautiful life, to become fully alive, to be able to say with certainty that You are my Christ, my Messiah, my Savior, and the Son of the living God!


Zinjin Iglesia is a seminarian for the Diocese of Arlington, VA studying at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He enjoys all things coffee, good eats, kombucha brewing, the art of storytelling, and encountering God through beauty. Check seminary life out on the Instagram page he helps run for the seminary here.