WE need to
learn this skill, this art. We have to feel at
home with this possibility. This was what Christ clearly
told us.
house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or
children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not
receive a
hundred times more now in this present age: houses and
brothers and
sisters and mothers and children and lands, with
persecutions, and
eternal life in the age to come.” (Mk 10,29-30)
In fact, he
rounded all these intriguing remarks by saying
that “many that are first will be last, and the last will
be first.”
(Mk 10,31) This is part of the mystery that Christ wants
us to live
with and to live by. We should stop fretting whether
these words are
worth following.
Let’s always
remember that Christ’s words hold what is
objectively true, good and beautiful for us. More than
that, they are
what can bring about our salvation, of which we are in
great need.
They are what would lead us to our eternal destination of
heaven.
If we bother to
study the lives of saints, then we will
see how these words are indeed effective. We should try
to give more
attention to saints than to media-hyped idols and
celebrities, since
the former truly give more authentic witness to our
life’s true
character than the latter.
It’s not that
we have to reject our parents, the family,
our business and other earthly affairs we have. Our Lord
himself
commands us to honor our parents and to subdue the earth.
We just have
to learn how to love our parents and to get involved in
our temporal
concerns properly.
That means that
while we have to love our parents and
others as much as possible and get seriously immersed in
our earthly
affairs, we just have to see to it that our heart and
mind are solely
for our Lord, that our motives are nothing other than
love for God and
love for others which should go together.
We should not
be afraid to go through the required
sacrifices and self-denial, since these can only lead us
to the joy
and peace meant for us. We need to do better than a
shallow and narrow
view of our earthly life, a knee-jerk reaction to things.
Detachment does
not remove our involvement and engagement
in our earthly and temporal affairs. It simply puts them
in the right
context and the right direction. It frees us from
unnecessary baggage.
It improves our vision and understanding of things, and
predisposes
our heart to the real love which can only be a sharing in
God’s love.
We therefore
should not have superfluous things, creating
needs that are really not needs, and thereby generating
attachments
that can be a hindrance in one’s relation with God and
with others.
Together with
this call to detachment, Christ is telling
us to be fruitful in this life. “Much will be required of
the person
entrusted with much,” he said, “and still more will be
demanded of the
person entrusted with more.” (Lk 12,48)
It’s a call to
generosity that he has reiterated many
times, like in the parable of the talents, for example,
as well as in
the parables of sower and the seed, the tenants in the
vineyard, and
the different images he taught about the Kingdom of God.
We need to
trade and make a gain and an increase of what we have
received from
God.
Our
fruitfulness will depend on our proper detachment from
things so we can be filled with nothing else than God
himself and his
power, wisdom and all other good things in abundance.
This is when we
can truly gain by losing!
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