Lectio
“He denies himself whosoever is changed for the better, and begins to be what he was not, and ceases to be what he was… He also denies himself, who having trode under foot the risings of pride, shews himself in the eyes of God to be estranged from himself.”
— St. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem
Meditatio
Jesus says deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. But we all too often fail to realize that He is leading us to the crucifixion. He is leading us up the mountain of sacrifice where we must lie ourselves down on the altar before God and give ourselves to Him, and in so doing, release our old lives and our old selves, joined to His own dying, to the mercy of Him who gives new life and draws out our true selves from beneath the ash of sin and rebellion.
The Christian life is not an easy life. It asks us — Christ asks us — to give up everything we are, everything we have, and everything we believe for the sake of the One way, the One truth, and the One life that saves. In so doing, we must not only turn away from the world and its ways, but also from our own selfish desires, self-centered fears, and ambitions of self-interest and even self-preservation.
The self that wishes to save itself, to bolster itself against pain, suffering, and loss, and to put itself above all else, does not and cannot know God. Likewise, the self that is only interested in itself is estranged from God. We do this because, as Christ showed us, God is a God of giving, a God of sacrifice, and a God of pouring out for the sake of others. There is no room for self-interest or even self-preservation in love, and God is love.
Our sacrifice, it should be said, does not save us. Only Christ’s sacrifice can do that, and did do that. But our sacrifice — our death in baptism alongside Him — joins us to His sacrifice so that we may be saved. And this is true of all of the sacraments we have been given by Him through the Church, for each of them asks us to give up our old lives for new, and, in fact, each in their own way, rids us of our old selves that we may be reborn in, through, and with Him.
Christianity, then, is not a religion merely of salvation in a moment, but of becoming saved, of perpetual rebirth, and of becoming our true selves in Christ. Through the sacrifice Christ made with His life, and the sacrifice made through our lives with Him, we are transformed and the self that was estranged from God begins to become estranged from itself as we follow Him up the hill of surrender to the will of the Father, leaving all that we were behind us so that we can be given new life — so that, in Christ, the ash of who we were becomes the ground from which we rise made new, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the God who saves and for the sake of all who may come to know Him through us.
Oratio
Where Shall A Soul Go
arisen from dust
life breathed
into bones
a soul
embodied
free to choose
free to flee
the source of life
the breather of life
yet where shall a body go
that has no life in it
given over to a world
that knows only death
back to the dust
the altar of the source
to burn away death
upon a funeral pyre
reborn of ash
new life breathed in
free to surrender
free to submit
to the source of life
the breather of life
for where shall a soul go
but from whence it came
arising
ascending
recollected into Life
Contemplatio
Somewhere in you is a self that has fled the source of life, and somewhere in you is a self that longs to return. You do not have to resolve this tension today. Hold it in stillness, withholding nothing, and let Him move as He will.
Related Scripture
“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
— Galatians 2:19-20 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Not the Sweetness, But the Giver: John of the Cross and the Freedom Beyond Consolation (Lectio Divina), which turns to a different form of self-emptying — releasing our grip not on our identity, but on the very consolations we mistake for God Himself.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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