Our western society enjoys many perks: we have ample food, clean water,\nrelative safety, toilet paper. And although these things, and more, are good,\nwe can become complacent and forget about the human vocation. God did not make\nus for comfort in this life; He made us for glory in the next. \u201cWhoever finds\ntheir life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find\nit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding our life in this world means we stop searching for life in the\nnext. We settle for things that are limited and will eventually die: pleasure,\nwealth, power, and fame. The Lord reminds us of this. He wants us to order our\nlives properly by ordering our loves. \u201cWhoever loves father or mother more than\nme is not worthy of me.\u201d No one, not even our families, deserves our love more\nthan Jesus Christ. Why? Because He is alone satisfies our restless heart. As St\nAugustine says, “for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are\nrestless until they rest in you.” Jesus Christ alone can give us the life\nthat is both boundless and unending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, finding eternal life demands something that any hearer in\nJesus\u2019 day would cringe at: carrying our cross and following Him. The cross\nwas, and is, a symbol of death. It was the worst punishment the Romans\ninflicted on criminals. It was usually reserved as a tool to deter rebellion\nand insurrection, as was the case with Spartacus. For the Lord Jesus to say\nthat we are unworthy of Him unless we carry our cross means that we are not\nworthy of Him unless we accept the instrument of our death and shame. This is\nwhat it means to die to self: to let go of everything that stops or slows us\ndown from loving God first in our life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is impossible on our own. But notice the Lord\u2019s command: \u201ctake up their cross and follow me<\/em>\u201d. He Himself has taken His cross. The Lord never commands us to do something He Himself is not willing to do. And this is both comforting and terrifying. It is comforting to know that the Lord has trod this path and will accompany us along the way. But it is also terrifying because to reject His grace, to reject His help, means that we have no one to blame but ourselves for our sins and, if we are obstinate in our sins, damnation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clinging to this life means we prefer this temporal life to the eternal\nlife Christ offers. But to recognize that there is more to life than pleasure,\nwealth, power, and fame and so live for Christ Jesus means that we accept what\nHe offers us: eternal beatitude through the cross. Certainly, things in this\nworld are good. But they are good only insofar as they do not hinder us from\nthe Good God who died and rose for us. Because to cling to this life is a death\nsentence; but to embrace the cross, the altar on which we offer ourselves as He\ndid for us, is to choose everlasting life with Christ: \u201cfor if we have died\nwith Him, we shall also rise with Him\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joseph Yuson <\/strong>\u2013 St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fot. Samuel Mcgarrigle\/Unsplash.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-strona-glowna-najnowsze","category-strona-glowna-slider"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n