Lectio
“For then we rightly hate our own soul when we indulge not its carnal desires, when we subdue its appetites, and wrestle against its pleasures.”
— Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church, Catena Aurea on Luke 14:25-27
Meditatio
In order that we might follow Christ who calls us to join Him in this life and the next, we must be willing, by His grace, to give something up. We must be willing to give everything up. For Christ asks not merely for our possessions, or even our sacrifices, but for our lives. He asks us to give up our old selves. He asks us to die with Him in baptism, not so that we remain dead, but so that we may be reborn with Him and given new life.
When Christ invites us to follow Him, He is inviting us to join Him on the Cross. He is inviting us to surrender, not only our spirits, but our entire selves, to God. He is inviting us to give everything we own, everything we desire, and everything we are to Love, that, through Love, love might increase in us. But no one, not even Christ who prayed to the Father to take the cup of suffering from Him if it was the Father’s will to do so, is spared the fear of crucifixion’s anguish, not even for Love.
And so there is a price that must be paid for love, not because love can be bought with sacrifice, and not because we can make up for our sins with offerings to the Lord, but because there is so much in us that is not love. All that is not love must be cast off by love so that we might become the beings of love we were intended to be when Love created us in Love’s own image and likeness for the purpose of love.
In the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ speaks of hating even father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and life itself (Luke 14:26). He is not asking us to love them less, but to allow our love to be rightly ordered by God. So it is with the possessions, instincts, and even the persons we hold too tightly. By His grace, we must even come to hate what is not love in our own souls, resisting our urges to indulge their carnal desires, subduing their appetites, and wrestling against their disordered pleasures. Like Christ in the desert, our souls will be tempted by hunger, pride, and power, and like Christ, we are called to fend off these temptations with prayer and Scripture.
This death to our old selves, this letting go of everything we were and once held to be true and valuable, it is not the end of the story. Death with Christ is only the beginning, for with Him, death leads to resurrection. Through Christ, nothing we are asked to give up is truly lost, for in Christ, to die is to gain.
We are also like Christ in another way, for He was never truly alone in the desert because the Father never abandoned the Son, and neither are we alone in our spiritual battles because Christ is ever with us.
Oratio
All My Self Wants
take me Lord
my heart aches
for all I cannot give
for all I know not how
but I want to want You
more than myself
or all my self wants
but my self wants so much
and knows not how
to want You
more than myself
but I want to want You
for all I know not how
for all I cannot give
my heart aches
take me Lord
Contemplatio
You do not have to want God perfectly to be wanted by God. Whatever you cannot yet give, whatever in you still aches or grips, is already known and already held by the One who asks for your life only to give it back as Life. Rest here in silence, and consent to being taken.
Related Scripture
“for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”
— Colossians 3:3-4 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Fire That Prepares Us: John of the Cross and the Dark Night of Divine Love (Lectio Divina), which turns to the Love already at work in us long before we say yes.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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