In this Sunday’s
Gospel we hear Jesus who says: “Whoever wants to
come after me must deny himself, take up his cross
and follow me. Because whoever wishes to save his
life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my
sake will find it.”
What does it mean to “deny" yourself? And why should
you deny yourself? We know about the indignation of
the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche over this the
request of this Gospel.
I will begin answering these questions with an
example. During the Nazi persecution, many trains
full of Jews traveled from every part of Europe to
the extermination camps. They were induced to get on
the trains by false promises of being taken to
places that would be better for them, when, in fact,
they were being taken to their destruction. It
happened at some of the stops that someone who knew
the truth, called out from some hiding place to the
passengers: “Get off! Run away!” Some succeeded in
doing so.
The example is a hard one, but it expresses
something of our situation. The train of life on
which we are traveling is going toward death. About
this, at least, there are no doubts. Our natural
“I,” being mortal, is destined for destruction. What
the Gospel is proposing to us when it exhorts us to
deny ourselves, is to get off this train and board
another one that leads to life. The train that leads
to life is faith in him who said: “Whoever believes
in me, even if he dies, will live.”
Paul understood this transferring from one transport
to another and he describes it thus: “It is no
longer I who lives, Christ lives in me.” If we
assume the “I” of Christ we become immortal because
he, risen from the dead, dies no more. This
indicates the meaning of the words of the Gospel
that we have heard. Christ’s call for us to deny
ourselves and thus find life is not a call to abuse
ourselves or reject ourselves in a simplistic way.
It is the wisest of the bold steps that we can take
in our lives.
But we must immediately make a qualification. Jesus
does not ask us to deny “what we are,” but “what we
have become.” We are images of God. Thus, we are
something “very good,” as God himself said,
immediately after creating man and woman. What we
must deny is not that which God has made, but that
which we ourselves have made by misusing our freedom
-- the evil tendencies, sin, all those things that
have covered over the original.
Years ago, off the coast of Calabria in southern
Italy, there were discovered two encrusted masses
that vaguely resembled human bodies. They were
removed from the sea and carefully cleaned and
freed. They turned out to be bronze statues of
ancient warriors. They are known today as the Riace
Warriors and are on display at the National Museum
of Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria. They are among
the most admired sculptures of antiquity.
This example can help us understand the positive
aspect of the Gospel proposal. Spiritually, we
resemble the condition of those statues before their
restoration. The beautiful image of God that we
should be is covered over by the seven layers of the
seven capital sins.
Perhaps it is not a bad idea to recall what these
sins are, if we have forgotten them: pride, greed,
lust, wrath, gluttony, envy and sloth. St. Paul
calls this disfigured image, “the earthly image,” in
contrast to the “heavenly image,” which is the
resemblance of Christ.
“Denying ourselves,” therefore, is not a work of
death, but one of life, of beauty and of joy. It is
also a learning of the language of true love.
Imagine, said the great Danish philosopher
Kierkegaard, a purely human situation. Two young
people love each other. But they belong to two
different nations and speak completely different
languages. If their love is to survive and grow, one
of them must learn the language of the other.
Otherwise, they will not be able to communicate and
their love will not last.
This, Kierkegaard said, is how it is with us and
God. We speak the language of the flesh, he speaks
that of the spirit; we speak the language of
selfishness, he that of love.
Denying yourself is learning the language of God so
that we can communicate with him, but it is also
learning the language that allows us to communicate
with each other. We will not be able to say “yes” to
the other -- beginning with our own wife or husband
-- if we are not first of all able to say “no” to
ourselves.
Keeping within the context of marriage, many
problems and failures with the couple come from the
fact that the man has never learned to express love
for the woman, nor she for the man. Even when it
speaks of denying ourselves, we see that the Gospel
is much less distant from life than it is sometimes
believed.
