20150913
THE PARADOX OF LIFE LIES IN ONE’S FIDELITY TO SELF
THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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Isaiah 50:5-9 ©
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The Lord has opened
my ear.
For my part, I made
no resistance,
neither did I turn
away.
I offered my back to
those who struck me,
my cheeks to those
who tore at my beard;
I did not cover my
face
against insult and
spittle.
The Lord comes to my
help,
so that I am
untouched by the insults.
So, too, I set my
face like flint;
I know I shall not be
shamed.
My vindicator is here
at hand. Does anyone start proceedings against me?
Then let us go to
court together.
Who thinks he has a
case against me?
Let him approach me.
The Lord is coming to
my help,
who will dare to
condemn me?
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Psalm
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Psalm
114:1-6,8-9 ©
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I will walk in the
presence of the Lord in the land of the living.
I love the Lord for
he has heard
the cry
of my appeal;
for he turned his ear
to me
in the
day when I called him.
I will walk in the
presence of the Lord in the land of the living.
They surrounded me,
the snares of death,
with the
anguish of the tomb;
they caught me,
sorrow and distress.
I called
on the Lord’s name.
O Lord, my God,
deliver me!
I will walk in the
presence of the Lord in the land of the living.
How gracious is the
Lord, and just;
our God
has compassion.
The Lord protects the
simple hearts;
I was
helpless so he saved me.
I will walk in the
presence of the Lord in the land of the living.
He has kept my soul
from death,
my eyes
from tears
and my
feet from stumbling.
I will walk in the
presence of the Lord
in the
land of the living.
I will walk in the
presence of the Lord in the land of the living.
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Second reading
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James 2:14-18 ©
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Take the case, my
brothers, of someone who has never done a single good act but claims that he
has faith. Will that faith save him? If one of the brothers or one of the
sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on, and one of
you says to them, ‘I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty’, without
giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that? Faith is
like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead.
This is
the way to talk to people of that kind: ‘You say you have faith and I have good
deeds; I will prove to you that I have faith by showing you my good
deeds – now you prove to me that you have faith without any good deeds to
show.’
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Gospel
Acclamation
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Jn14:6
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Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the Way, the
Truth and the Life, says the Lord;
No one can come to
the Father except through me.
Alleluia!
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Or
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Ga6:14
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The only thing I can
boast about is the cross of our Lord,
through whom the
world is crucified to me, and I to the world.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Mark 8:27-35 ©
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Jesus and his
disciples left for the villages round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this
question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’ And they told him. ‘John
the Baptist,’ they said ‘others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.’
‘But you,’ he asked ‘who do you say I am?’ Peter spoke up and said to him, ‘You
are the Christ.’ And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him.
And he
began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to
be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put
to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite
openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. But,
turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, ‘Get behind
me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’
He
called the people and his disciples to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be a
follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.
For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his
life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’
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THE PARADOX OF LIFE LIES IN ONE’S FIDELITY TO SELF
THROUGH SELF-RENUNCIATION
|
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: ISA 50:5-9;
JMS 2:14-18; MK 8:27-35
Jesus
said, “Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his
life … will save it.” What Jesus meant is that if we want to find life,
then we must be true to ourselves to the extent that we are willing to die for
our true selves. To die to self simply means to die to the false self and
recover our real and true identity that God has created us to be. Indeed,
this was the case of Jesus. He refused to succumb to the pressures of society
and His peers to assume the identity of the person they wanted Him to be. Even
His intimate friends, the apostles, tried to impose their image of the Christ
on Him. He rejected the kind of glorious Christ they thought He should be.
Instead, He insisted on being the suffering Christ, for He knew that “the Son
of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the
chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death.”
To be
true to oneself is to be true to God. The truth is that God has chosen a
vocation for each of us. However, our vocation is only an expression of
our self because our identity is more than our function in life. If Jesus
did not accept the many titles given to Him, it was not because the titles do
not fit Him, but because He was more than the sum of all the titles. This is
also true for us. No one role or more can qualify our unique being.
We are more than what we are called to do in life.
Nevertheless,
the only way we can be faithful to ourselves is to be true to the vocation that
God has assigned to us. Not to do so is to betray ourselves because our
vocation is the expression of who we are. This is quite different from
fitting ourselves to a role, especially when that role does not fit us.
The roles we undertake must truly be the expression of who we are; otherwise we
become misfits. But our self-identity must remain unique and the same,
even if our roles were to change. In this way, our self-identity will always
survive beyond the roles we have in life, be it as priest, teacher or parent,
etc.
The
crucial difference between being true to our identity and assuming a role is
that our being must express our doing and not vice versa. Of course,
being true to self is not always easy. The price of fidelity is the cross
and even death. Jesus certainly was expressing His own experience when He
said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and
take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus did not command us to take up His
cross but our own. This is because the cross that we have to carry cannot
be someone else’s. This cross can only be ours uniquely, since it is the
cross of being true to our identity and ourselves. Only in this way will
we find life.
This
has been the path of the suffering servant of Isaiah and Christ Himself. They
were ready to face resistance and opposition because they chose to be true to
themselves and their mission. Indeed, we are told that the suffering
servant would not budge or quit even when humiliated, insulted and spat upon.
Jesus, who is the fulfillment of the Suffering Servant, was resolute and went
forward to Jerusalem even though He knew He had to die for being true to His
identity as the Messiah, and for the Good News that He was sent to
proclaim. Even when His friends turned against Him, He refused to turn
back. Instead, He resolved to fulfill His Father’s plan. He would
not allow anyone to deter Him. He refused to quit in the face of the
cross.
Like
the suffering servant and Christ, we too must set our face like flint. We
must not forget the words of Jesus when He said, “What profit does a man gain
if has the whole world but loses his own soul?” In other words, what is
the use of living a life when our interior spirit is dead because we have
suppressed our true identity? Without the spirit, our life is dead even
if we are physically alive because we would merely exist. So what must be
done to ensure that we do not fall into such a tragic situation?
Firstly,
we must know ourselves so that we can be true to who we really are. We
must not deceive ourselves into believing ourselves to be what we are
not. Self-knowledge is the first key to fidelity to self. Once we know
ourselves, then we would not be so easily influenced by what people say or
think of us because we know where we stand and who we are. But how can we
know ourselves? We can only know ourselves to the extent that we know God
and Jesus. Thus, it is in prayer that we come to discover who we really
are. Like Jesus, the suffering servant of Isaiah, we must always be
receptive so that the Lord can open our ears to the word of God. It was
through Jesus’ intimacy with the Father that He came to know His true identity
more and more each day. Indeed, only when the Lord opens our ears can we
come to know our true selves. It is therefore exigent that we spend time
in prayer, in communion with God if we are to know our real identity and our
vocation.
And
what is our true self if not the fact that we are all made to be Good News to
others according to our uniqueness and talents? To be ourselves does not
mean that we simply do whatever we want in life. Nay, to be ourselves
means to be a loving self, for that is what we truly are. That is why
Jesus said the cross must be carried for His sake and for the sake of the
gospel. The gospel in this context refers to the good news of
unconditional love. This truth is reiterated in St James’ letter when he
emphasized the importance of expressing our faith in concrete works of love and
mercy. The failure to live a loving life implies that we are not living the
Kingdom life, and thus contradicting ourselves to be people of faith. Of
course, how we express this Kingdom life is another matter because it must be
expressed according to our uniqueness. But the task of loving is common
to all.
Secondly,
we must find our strength in God, like the way the suffering servant of Isaiah
did. Even though he was insulted, despised and rejected, he remained
faithful to his calling because he knew that the Lord would help him. As
he said, “The Lord comes to my help, so that I am untouched by the insults … I
know I shall not be shamed. My vindicator is here at hand.” Yes, he
had absolute confidence that God would stand by him and prove his accusers
wrong. He knew that God would be his vindicator. Jesus, too, was,
confident that God would be faithful to Him. He knew that even if
the people could not accept Him as the suffering Messiah, God would vindicate
Him somehow by proving them wrong. Hence, like the psalmist, it would do
us well to say, “I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the
living.” We can live only if we know that God is present and with us in
our struggles to be faithful to ourselves.
Thirdly,
we must realize that simply by being true to ourselves is already our
vindication. There is no greater freedom in life than to realize our
uniqueness, instead of living somebody else’s life. By not duplicating
others in us, we become the unique person we are meant to be. We become
special not because we pretend or seek to be special, but because God has made
us special. But this happiness is ours only if we dare to be ourselves.
Today,
we are called to imitate the lives of those who have been faithful to God and
to themselves. We are not to reproduce their lives in exactly the same
way. Nay, we are only to follow their courage, sincerity, creativity and
originality. In this way, the promise of Jesus that if “anyone who loses
his life for the sake of the gospel will save it” becomes a reality. For
the Good News that Jesus comes to proclaim is precisely the fact that we are
created to be unique and that God loves us unconditionally. Only with
this realization that God loves us for what we are and what we can be, can we
then find life. To die to ourselves is simply to die to the false images
we have of ourselves, or that which society has made us out to be.
Rather, we are called to become more and more of what God has meant us to be so
that we can show forth His riches and goodness.
In the
final analysis, what is important is that God accepts us. God alone is
our judge and vindicator. Yes, if God accepts us, we can also accept
ourselves. What does it matter if others do not? After all,
happiness is within us and not without. If we are happy within, then we
will be happy even when others are not happy with us. By being faithful
both to God and to self, such a faith or fidelity can truly be considered a
saving faith, as St James told us in his letter. So if we want to save
our lives, then it is imperative that we carry the cross of fidelity to God and
to ourselves in imitation of Jesus for the sake of the gospel of unconditional
love.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh
Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Singapore
©
All Rights Reserved
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