Monday, July 17, 2006

Losing your life

Today's Gospel is a collection of really hard saying from Jesus saying, basically, "Either I'm #1 in your life, or you don't have a life!" That "whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it..."
That line tends to transport me to Philippians 2 and 3. In chapter 2, with the phenomenal hymn to Christ, the self-emptying slave, we see Jesus "losing his life" for our sake, and "finding it" in the resurrection. In chapter 3, we see how Paul "accepted the loss of all things" in order to "gain Christ and be found in him"--in other words, to find life.
"Losing one's life for the Gospel" is the primary mystery of the earthly life of Christ. So in our case, it becomes finding life in Christ--finding that Christ is life!

No comments: