22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Lose to Gain
Today Jesus says: “You have to lose your life to find it.” Sports coaches and athletes say: “No pain; no gain.”
Psychologists say: “Lose your false self to find your true self.” Spiritual writers say: “The dark night precedes the dawn.”
What is it that we must lose and what do we gain? Well, the good news is that we don’t lose anything essential to our humanity.
We don’t lose anything that is good within us. All we really lose is our inhumanity, the not-so-good stuff.
What Do We Lose?
For example, Jesus wants us to lose our self-centeredness, which isolates us from other people. We are to lose our prejudices, which blind us to the truth.
Jesus wants us to lose our consumerism, which distracts us from life’s deeper realities. We are to lose our insecurity, which restrains us from doing what is right.
Jesus wants us to lose our obsession with money, which prevents us from being generous. And we are to lose our fear, which keeps us from loving.
What Do We Gain?
To the degree that we do this losing, we gain. Through the power of Christ and our relationship with him, our humanity and our life are actually fuller.
Now, we don’t have to get there all at once. We can do it step by step.
And we don’t have to advance or become perfect in every dimension of life. Actually, most saints are imperfect and unfinished in some way.
And the amazing truth is that in allowing our humanity to become fuller, we simultaneously become divine. We experience God as more and more living within us and experience ourselves as more and more living in God.
So, in losing our lives in God, we don’t really lose at all. Instead, we emerge into a fullness that we would never have dreamed of.
But we have to remember: only with God and only in going through this process of losing can we gain and be our fullest self.
