It’s hard to follow Jesus Christ, to be a Christian, but it’s worth it. That sums up the message our Lord is trying to communicate to us in this Sunday’s Gospel passage — and it’s a message that we constantly need to be reminded of.
At first, it almost seems like Jesus is trying to discourage us from following him. He warns that friendship with him is demanding. To be a true friend of Jesus Christ means that everything else has to be put in second place, even personal dreams and family ties. The demands of our friendship with Jesus Christ will require us to carry a cross, sacrifice self-gratifying desires, and maybe even endure great suffering. That sounds hard, painful, and maybe even unreasonable.
But God knows what he is doing! And if he calls us to this kind of lifestyle — which he does — it’s only because he knows that this is the path to lasting happiness. If we are truly living for God, to give him glory and to build up his Kingdom in the world, then God will take care of us. We will not lose our reward.
St Paul understood this. This is why he tells us in today’s Second Reading that to share Christ’s life — the life of the redeemed soul, the new life of grace won for us by Christ’s passion and resurrection — we must also share Christ’s death. We have to die to self, to put to death all selfish and self-centred desires, to rise with Christ, to live the life of the Spirit, the life that gives true meaning and satisfaction to our lives.
However, we can’t respond to God’s invitation to friendship unless we identify what cross he is asking each one of us to take up and unite it to Christ’s own cross. Maybe your cross is an illness, or the illness of a loved one. If so, when Jesus comes in the Eucharist, unite your suffering to his.
Maybe Jesus is asking you to leave behind a sinful habit – dishonesty, lust, greed, or neglect. Habits are always hard to change, but with God’s grace, all things are possible. If that is the cross he is asking you to embrace, he will give you the strength you need to do so.
Maybe he is calling you to a new project, or to set out on a new path. Maybe you feel fearful at the prospect, at the uncertainty, at the risk. That’s why Jesus wants to come to you this Sunday in Holy Communion. He wants to be your strength, your confidence, your courage. And so he feeds your soul with his soul, your body with his body.
This is the love of our God — a love that makes himself present in our lives, no matter what. It is a love that never leaves us alone, and that never leaves us to carry our crosses alone.
Yes, Jesus asks us to take up our cross, but only so that, by dying with him, we can also rise with him, and live with him, meaningfully, here on earth and forever in heaven.
