Loss Is Gain

Loss is gain.  When we lose ourselves in love, we gain since we find our true selves in love.  Through love our lives are saved.  God invites us into love and thus into the glory of God.  

Jesus taught us, "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; whoever loses his life for My sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it."*  If we cling to what we have, we lose it.  If we lose it, we are saved.  

By insisting on our own ideas that we think up without the help of God, we are turning our backs on our true selves.  If we follow only our own plans, we lose our lives.  

If we let go of what we think we have, then our hands are free.  With open hands and hearts, we can accept what God wants to give us.  As we lose what we had been imagining on our own, we save our lives.  

It's pointless to pursue our own agenda but not become our true selves.  Jesus continued, "What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"**  

In sacrifice we find our true selves.  Today's first reading brings us back to Abraham.  Since he was willing to lose Isaac, his only son, Abraham gained so much more, becoming the father of many descendants.***    

As we sacrifice ourselves, we become our true selves who we will not fully see until Heaven.  What we shall be has not yet been revealed.  When it is revealed, we shall be like Him, since we will see Him as He is.****  

Then we will see Jesus in His glory.  Today in the Gospel we heard of how Peter, James and John saw Jesus in His glory as He was transfigured.  They saw Him in His glory; we wait to see Him in His glory.  

When we see Him in His glory, we will be like Him.  Until then, as we sing here at the hermitage, we wait for You, God, to transform our lowly bodies into glorious copies of Your own.  

We wait, and yet in a certain sense, this transformation can begin now.  If we lose ourselves by living in love now, we find our true selves.  God gives us His love so we can share in His glory.  

We are saved by giving up our lives through love.  With the love of God poured into our hearts,***** we are empowered to die to ourselves and so be saved.  Through the love of God we are saved.  

* Mark 8:35 

** Mark 8:36 

*** Genesis 22:1-18 

**** 1 John 3:2 

***** Romans 5:5 

Be Brought Back To New Life

We can think we're dead, when we're just about to come back to life.  We can be convinced all is lost, when all is about to be found.  Our circumstances can seem horrible, but they might be the path of our transformation into who God has always intended us to be.  

Amongst the Christmas presents I received a couple of months ago, I received a plant.  It's a most unusual one, quite resilient, not needing to be watered.  I didn't even ensure it got much sunlight; I just placed it on the table near the window in my cell.  Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, slowly it grew, eventually blossoming from short green shoots into tall, red, wide open flowers.  

After about a month, the vivid red flowers wilted and shriveled, darkening to such a shade of purple that one could have misperceived it was black.  I'd figured its glory had come and gone.  Then in the last couple of weeks, I saw new bright red flowers budding out of it.  After not too long, they burst open, announcing the triumphant rebirth of this determined plant...  

As you can see, there are other points where the stalks which had been darkening are in fact lightening into a brighter green.  Under decay, growth springs up.  Through all that seems to shake us to our core, we are being called into new life.  

As we grapple with the coronavirus, as it brings us the social distancing and the lockdowns, as we struggle with the isolation and its attendant emotional and psychological and spiritual challenges, as we lose financial resources amidst the constrictions on the economy, through it all we are being invited to be remade.  In each of these changes in our lives, we are presented with chances to grow.  

Recently I was blessed to witness such remarkable personal transformation.  A friend of mine came to visit me here at the hermitage.  When he showed up, I saw that he had become quite slender.  He said that once the lockdown had set in and he was spending so much time at home, he kept looking at his exercise bike. He concluded it had been ridiculous how he had been using it as a clothes rack.  The clothes came off the bike, and he went onto the bike.  Each day he spent a little more time on the bike, gradually losing weight.  He embraced an opportunity brought by the virus to live more healthily and thus come closer to being who he has been meant to be.  

Another friend of mine is also seeing fruits of personal transformation due to his embracing the chances presented to him during this time of the virus.  He also came here less than a year ago, following a call to attend to his soul, to spend time in prayer and work and spiritual reading.  Having valued what he has had to learn on his spiritual journey, he has reached a point such that in less than half an hour, he is going to be baptized.  

We are coming into new growth not despite of all that besets us, but precisely because we are being given these marvelous chances which seem harrowing but truly are calls to rise up and become our true selves.  Fire may devastate the landscape, reducing much of the foliage to ashes, but do not forget that we came from ashes.  As we begin Lent, this Ash Wednesday, let us remember that before we return to ashes, we have many more deaths and rebirths waiting for us along the way, which are not mishaps but blessings.  

All may seem dead.  Yet when all seems lost, we are being given outstanding opportunities.  It is precisely when it seems that we have little reason to hope that we are invited to have faith.  When we go forward in faith, trusting in God, then God can work wonders through us, bringing us back to life.  In faith we are brought to new life.