 |
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In today’s gospel, we hear: “Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
There is a current commercial that asks, “What’s in your wallet?” Too often there’s a tendency to make a similar comparison of spiritual power: “How big is your cross?” Sometimes we might take a look at our lives and see ourselves as the most overworked, the most underpaid and the most underappreciated. While there may be some element of truth to these feelings, the bottom line is that it is only through divine guidance that we’ve made, by our baptism, the decision to follow Christ and to use our God-given talents and gifts in service to our families, to our loved ones and to others.
As today’s Gospel reminds us, we must be willing to pay the ultimate price of discipleship, a price that is often difficult or even overwhelming. The cost is this: giving Christ the ultimate priority in our lives and in our service to others. This is the real “sacrifice.” Jesus hardly expected all his followers to be crucified, but he did ask them – as he asks us once again at Sunday Eucharist – to embrace the cross of unselfish love: a cost he fully demonstrated in his own passion, death and resurrection.
Father Mike
|
|
