DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Sunday, October 4, 2018

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their soul (life)? Or what will they give in return for their life? – Matthew 16:24-26

If ever there was a cautionary message for the financial and political affairs of humanity it would be those words of Christ … For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?  And yet over and over and over again … the world and far too often the Church does not take seriously and deeply these words of caution.  Why?  Because we at some point confuse heavenly power with worldly power, we confuse spiritual prosperity with financial prosperity.

The word “soul” refers not to some ghost within you, but the living essence of who you are … your life, the life that lives within your earthly existence.  It includes one personhood, one’s values and priorities, one’s sensibilities and one’s imagination, the wake of one’s life-journey, one’s dreams, one’s memories, and still even more.  The soul is that through which flows the eternal River of God.

Every day I watch the world rally around the demagogues of wealth and power.  They find their security in the false gods Mammon (god of money) and Caesar (the god of military might).  They cloak these false gods in sanctified robes, justifying them with a contortion of misused scriptures.  They hide these wolves who prey upon the soul with the appearance of sheep’s clothing.  And as the gods of wealth and worldly power become more and more dominant in the soul of a person and the soul of a people … they slowly corrode and consume the soul bestowed by the Lord.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their soul (life)? Or what will they give in return for their soul (life)? ”

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz