There’s an old proverb that says, “May you live in interesting time.” We certainly do. It’s hurricane season, it’s election season. We have urban riots and protest marches. And then there’re the race to conquer the coronavirus.
In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus predicts his passion, death and resurrection. Peter shouts: “God forbid. No such thing will happen to you, Lord.” But God’s ways are not ours. Out of the cross, the central symbol of Christianity, will burst forth new life. Our faith proclaims that hidden within the mystery of Jesus’s death is the glory of his resurrection. And so too hidden in our death is our resurrection, life eternal.
Jesus continues, “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
The 19th century Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote a book titled “A Confession” in which he describes his own search for purpose in life. Yes, “where did I come from?” “Where am I going?” “What is my life all about?” Tolstoy discovered that many ordinary people were able to answer these questions through their faith in Jesus: their way, their truth and their life.
So, what am I living for? There are as many answers as there are people. We cannot adequately answer and yet we cannot help but answer by how we live and what we do.
On the one hand we are finite and mortal. On the other, we are free, within limits, and accountable for the way in which we live.
The Catholic answer to “why are we here?” acknowledges the brevity of human life. It also acknowledges our freedom to choose good over evil, right over wrong, the true over the false. Hence all of us are responsible for the way in which we choose to live.
Tragically, people do sometimes choose evil over good, wrong over right. Why? The Book of Genesis highlights our brokenness, our fall from grace. The Catholic tradition calls this “original sin.”
There’s plenty of evidence in this world that things are broken. The coronavirus has upended the global economy. Millions of refugees are fleeing violence. Wildfires and hurricanes have devastated communities. Yes, human beings cry out for freedom, peace, justice, salvation!
But who can save us? Some people have looked for answers in things, in other persons, in “isms” of one kind or another.
The Catholic tradition looks to a power beyond ourselves. This awesome and overwhelming power – God -- is a compassionate God who became flesh in Jesus and is alive in our midst by the power of the Spirit—alive especially in the community of disciples we call the Church; and especially alive in the sacraments.
Yes, we possess within our fragile selves the incredible treasure of God’s life. We are in relationship with God by virtue of the life-giving waters of Baptism. But we must continue to struggle, as the prophet Micah said centuries ago, to do right, to love goodness, to walk humbly with our God.
May God grace us so that we can lose our life for his sake, and in doing find eternal life and internal peace.
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