The Thursday after Ash Wednesday, February 23, 2023

Luke 9, 22-25

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”

The parish church was filled all day yesterday for the Ash Wednesday Masses.  Longtime parishioners said they could not remember seeing anything like it.  

“The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  We should notice how the Lord speaks this way only to his Apostles (whom St. Luke refers to as “the disciples” in the time before they are actually “sent out”).  These twelve men have by this time spent nearly three years living and working with him.  They have seen close up the bitter hostility of the Temple authorities and the Pharisees to him.  More than one attempt has already been made on his life.  More than anyone else, they are prepared for this revelation by the Lord.  And we see how he makes it: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly, etc.”  This is the “Son of Man” spoken of by the Prophet Daniel and in popular but non-canonical books of the time.  This is the title of the messiah whom the Pharisees announced God would send in great glory to reestablish Israel.  But the Lord says they are wrong: that is not what the Son of Man would do.  Instead, he would be rejected by the leaders of the people who wanted to design their own savior, be killed by them, and then “rise”.  He does not explain much about what it meant that he would be “raised up” — it would be utterly beyond them.  Nor does he yet explain what his Death would accomplish, and what they were supposed to do when this happened to him, the Center of their lives.  It was overwhelming enough to hear him speak of his own imminent Death.

The Lord then comes out and says for all to hear: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  For us today, these familiar words hardly threaten us or cause us to pause.  But for the people of the time, the words amounted to madness.  And for the Apostles who had just heard him speak of his own Death, even more so.  For they now heard the Lord exhorting people to follow him even though he was to be rejected and killed by the elders and authorities who should have welcomed him.  By what right could he urge people to follow him to certain disaster and death? And he called them to follow him, personally.  He does not say for them to follow the Law or God, or to fight for the destiny of Israel.  They are to follow him, carrying the means of their own destruction.  “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  But to do this leads to saving one’s life.  Christ summons his people to battle.  It is a speech no general or king would have given on the eve of battle.  But if we rouse ourselves with the help of the grace Christ gives us, we will gain the eternal life we can receive only from him.  The people of the time could have gazed at each other and waited to see if Jesus would elaborate.  But the words are urgent, and the Lord spoke with urgency and force.  The meaning would only become clearer in time.  Perhaps in the days when St. Luke wrote his Gospel Christians still debated these words.

“What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”  The Greek is stronger: “but be destroyed or punished”: such a man not only loses what he thought he had won but is subsequently “destroyed” in eternal punishment.  But the world gained by the believer in Christ who loses his life for him far surpasses this world, which crumbles even as we walk upon it.  It is a world of glory and light and love, an eternal land where past sufferings are hardly remembered.  It is the place where love gushes upon and into us, and where we we free to love without restraint.  With the vision of heaven in our minds we stumble along with the heavy crosses of divine service we carry now, knowing that one day they will loft us there.