Chris Campbell

Beloved in the Body of Christ,

Today's Gospel reading is one that strikes me deeply, and is difficult to understand the meaning of. Jesus says: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." But what does it mean to both deny myself? What does it mean to take up my cross?

It would appear that by the following passages Jesus is describing a problem that I've experienced often; "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." It seems that humans live many lives. I live one life with my friends, another life with my family, and other lives still with my work, studies, ministries, etc. I have so many lives that sometimes I feel I don't know who I am; I want to save each of these lives, but as a result, I've lost my life.

The 17th-century French moralist, La Rochefoucauld describes something he calls l'amour-propre, which can be roughly translated as self-love but might also be captured by the modern term ego. He describes the danger of this aspect which resides in each of us saying:

There {within itself} it [self-love} is often invisible to itself, there it conceives, there it nourishes, and there it raises, without knowing, a great number of affections and hatreds; it forms some so monstrous that, when it brings them to light, it fails to recognize them, or it cannot resolve to confess them.

He goes on to describe how self-love will battle against itself, but is only strengthened by this. Thus showing perhaps the challenge which Christ speaks of ending for each of us, should we allow it.

I realize the futility of the attempt to control myself, and this is not what Jesus asks of me. He asks that I deny myself, to pick up what remains—my cross, the sacrifice of my ego’s life—and follow Him. This is the Way he has laid out for us all: to love and care for all those who need it most, the poor, the wretched, the infirmed, and those who still do not know that God's eternal love is offered to them if only they open themselves to it.

May you live in Truth, Peace, and Love,
Chris Campbell