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Friends,
our Gospel today lays out Jesus' conditions for discipleship. For all
of us sinners, to varying degrees, our own lives have become god. That
is to say, we see the universe turning around our ego, our needs, our
projects, our plans, and our likes and dislikes. True conversion—the metanoia
that Jesus talks about—is so much more than moral reform, though it
includes that. It has to do with a complete shift in consciousness, a
whole new way of looking at one's life.
Jesus
offered a teaching that must have been gut-wrenching to his first
century audience: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." His listeners knew
what the cross meant: a death in utter agony, nakedness, and
humiliation. They didn't think of the cross automatically in religious
terms, as we do. They knew it in all of its awful power.
Unless
you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower, Jesus says. This
move—this terrible move—has to be the foundation of the spiritual life.
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