Thursday February 10, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Thursday After Ash Wednesday
Reading (Deuteronomy 30:15-20) Gospel (St. Luke 9:22-25)
In the first reading from the Book of
Deuteronomy, Moses tells us that he places before us life and death, the
blessing and the curse. And he talks all about what will happen as we make our
choices. He says that if we choose life it is going to be because we have
chosen to serve the Lord, to be obedient to His commandments, to do all the
things that Our Lord is asking us to do, and to walk in His way. If we choose
death, it is because we have chosen not to serve the Lord but to serve other
gods and to do things our own way.
Our
Lord in the Gospel reading, then, follows up on the point and He tells us the
same thing. He places before us life and death. He places before us the
blessing and the curse, as well. He tells us exactly what it is going to
require. So if we are going to be obedient to the commandment of our God, what
is it? You must take up your cross daily and
follow Me. And He tells us that anyone who would lose his life will
save it. If we want life, it is only by losing our life in order to serve
Christ.
Now
that sounds like it is completely foolish, and on Our Lord’s part it sounds
like it is completely selfish. He says, Whoever
loses his life for My sake will save it. Imagine if we ran around
saying something like that – “The only way that you’re going to live is if you
do something for me”! Well, the difference is that He is God, and so He is
telling us that if we serve God (which is exactly what Moses told us) then we
will have life. But He tells us how we are to serve Him: It is to lose our
life, it is to take up our cross, and it is to follow in His way. That is
exactly what Moses said, except Moses did not say, “Take up your cross,” but he
told us to follow in the way of the Lord, to be obedient to His commands. Jesus
is just specifying what the commandment is: We have to be willing to lose
ourselves. If we lose ourselves for His sake then what happens is that we gain
Him, we are transformed into Christ, and then it is Christ Who lives in us.
That
is the whole goal of what this life is all about. And as we begin this holy
season of Lent, it is a stark reminder to us of what our lives are to be about,
that we are to be striving for life, for eternal life. There is only one way to
eternal life, and that is Jesus Christ. The Lord has made it very clear that if
we are going to follow that way it is going to lead right through Calvary,
right to the Cross, and from the Cross to eternity. So if we want to be able to
have eternal life, we have to walk the way; and the Way, the Truth, and the
Life are one and the same. If we want life, that is Jesus Christ. If we want to
be able to get to life, we have to walk on the way, and the way is Jesus
Christ. It is the simple truth, and the truth is Jesus Christ. It is all the
same. We like to try to invent some other way of being able to get there,
something that seems easier and more pleasant. That is serving another god; it
is not serving Jesus because He has told us exactly what it is going to require
if we are going to serve Him. If we are not doing it His way – and He is the Way – then we are walking a
different path; a different path is a different god, and it will not lead us to
eternity.
So
as we begin this time of self-denial, it is to walk upon that same path of
Christ, to be rejected, to be ridiculed, to be put to death. In this case, it
is putting to death that within our own selves which is not of God so that the
life of Christ will live in us, to choose the Cross because that is to choose
the blessing. It is to choose life. If we run away from the Cross, we have
chosen the curse and we have chosen death. That is what this world has chosen,
and we live in a culture of death. But, as Christian people, we espouse the
culture of life, and the life comes from dying to self, the life comes from the
Cross, the life comes only from union with Jesus Christ.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.