If we seek the freedom to be proficient in anything, playing a sport, an instrument, singing, dancing, acting, writing, drawing, pursuing a career, having a healthy relationship, being married and a parent, we are required to make a commitment of time, discipline, and sacrifice. The process of mastery also requires a willingness to risk, and make mistakes.
In any of the above examples, and any you may think of, consistent time is needed each day. The most challenging part of any endeavor is beginning and making the time. Once we actually begin, the next challenge is the discipline to stick with the goal no matter the distractions and temptations that may dissuade us. This process also takes sacrifice, because to do anything means we are not able to do something else. During each step of the process we risk making mistakes, not doing it right, looking foolish. We experience frustration and impatience as we see ahead of us what we seek to accomplish, but the freedom to do just that seems so far out of reach.
Yet, with the persistence to time, discipline, and sacrifice, we begin to have brief experiences, a foretaste of the freedom of mastery. We lose ourself in the moment where we are not only able to play a series of chords, hit that note, make a move, nail a precision shot, or are involved in a communication of mutual understanding, we are one with those actions. From this context from our personal experience of life, we might have a better understanding of the demands of discipleship.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life (Mt 16:24-26)?
Those of us who seek to be his disciples need to invest our time, discipline, and sacrifice. This is the same as any other endeavor we seek to master. The difference is that developing a discipleship with Jesus is to be our first priority. All else flows from our losing our life in Jesus, mind, body, and soul. We can have all the power, prestige, fame, material gain, pleasure at the tips of our fingers, we may have gained the whole world, but if our fundamental option is our self and our own pride, we have forfeited our life. God is our fulfillment; nothing else can satisfy the deep yearning for communion with him that we experience in the depths of our soul.
Finding our life, being true to who we are, free of that which is imposed on us from without and within, is what Jesus means by taking up our cross. We are to let go of our identity, our masks of who we pretend to be, if we are to be free to live a life of integrity and authenticity. Jesus refused the identity of the messiah that others projected upon him. He was not to be a leader of power in the worldly sense, not a warrior king, but a suffering servant, a king of peace. He would go to the cross and take upon him the pain, suffering, and sin of the world, and face death head on, and conquer all. He did so that we might have life and have it to the full. As St Irenaeus is believed to have written, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” May we make the commitment to give our time, discipline and sacrifice in pursuit of discipleship with Jesus, to carry our cross and to lose our life in him. By doing so we will experience the freedom for excellence to be who we are called to be and experience the joy and fulfillment of being fully alive!
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Today’s Gospel Reading:
Spiritual Stepping Stones 