The following homily was delivered by Father Johnson on
the second Sunday in Lent, March 8,
2009:
From an early age, he had
learned how to earn the approval of others. As a young boy he
learned that eating vegetables and refusing anything more than a
modest dessert would win him a favorable comparison to his older
brother, who ate the bare minimum necessary to get dessert. In his
first years of school, he discovered that sitting quietly and only
speaking when called upon would make him the favorite of every
teacher. In his church youth group, he found that by volunteering
for every service project he could prompt church leaders to point to
him as a good example for all of the other young men and women to
follow. As an adult, he discovered that giving in a way that was
public, but not too public, earned him the reputation of being
charitable. Making a point of ordering only one glass of wine while
dining out earned him the distinction of being temperate. Never
losing his temper made people think of him as self-controlled. He
had built a life that was the mirror image of self-denial; that is
to say, it was exactly the opposite of self-denial.
One of the dangers when we
read the exhortation of Jesus to deny our selves and take up His
cross and follow where He has led the way is that we may have a
mirror image of what self-denial really is. St. John of the Cross
warned his disciples that there were many in his own day who were
teaching a kind of asceticism which had all of the outward trappings
of self-denial, but was really very self-centered. He spoke of
mortifications of the flesh, such as extreme fasts and
self-flagellation, which had all of the appearances of holiness, but
were nothing more than the product of a desire to gain the
reputation of holiness, and an even stronger desire to earn the
respect of God. It is entirely possible to deny ourselves all of the
pleasures of life in this world, and at the same time fail to deny
our selves. It is that sort of mirror image of self-denial that was
so often at the heart of the conflict between Jesus and the
Pharisees.
True self-denial is
something much deeper. True self-denial is the surrender of our
wills and our desires to the desires and will of God. True
self-denial is what lies at the heart of the cross of Christ Jesus.
We must not make the mistake of thinking that the cross was a
pleasant prospect to Jesus. Nor may we imagine that the cross was a
way for Jesus to win the approval of His contemporaries. The cross
was so distant from anyone’s imagination of victory that, when Jesus
spoke of going to the cross, Peter began to rebuke Him. The desire
to find a way other than the cross posed such a temptation that
Jesus could only say that it was for Satan that Peter was speaking
at that moment. For Jesus, the cross was nothing less than the
fulfillment of His self-denial. It was an act of complete surrender
to the Father’s love and care for Him, and for His creation. It was
this self-denial, this loss of His own life, that ultimately led to
the victory of Christ over sin and death.
At first glance, true
self-denial may not appear to make much sense. After all, it does
not look like we get much out of it. The mirror image of self-denial
may well earn us the approval of others, or at least some sense of
achievement. But when we surrender our wills and desires to God, we
may end up despised and rejected with Jesus who was despised and
rejected. With a deeper understanding, however, we may grasp the
true wisdom of the kind of self-denial that leads to the cross of
Christ. In our reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans, the
question is posed, "If God is for us, who is against us?" or again,
"Who will separate us from the love of God?" The reason that
self-denial, the surrender of our wills and our desires to God,
sounds so terrifying is that we do not understand the love of God.
His desire is to create in us the desires He intends for us to have.
His will for us is to have the fulness of life that can only be
found when our minds are united to the mind of Christ. The assurance
that we have of the love of God is that He did not withhold his own
Son. If God gave His only Son for us, what would He withhold from
us? Self-denial puts us in the place where we are open to receive
the love of God. It opens us to receive what He desires to give. It
allows our hearts to be united to His so that we can live as He
intended us to live. Self-denial allows God to uproot the deep roots
of self-centered desires that enslave us to defending the images
that we try to project to the world as we rest in God’s
unconditional love for us.
We need to relinquish many
of the ideas that we have learned from an early age. If we live for
the approval of others, we become the slaves of their expectations.
No matter how pious our actions may appear, they spring from the
root of the desire to hold onto our own selves. If we construct
lives that are designed to protect what we possess, whether our
possessions are material or relationships or even deeply rooted
opinions, then we leave no room for God’s love to penetrate our
lives. We only hold on to the chains that bind us. If, on the other
hand, we honestly pray, "Thy Kingdom come in my life. Thy will be
done in me," there is no more need for us to defend ourselves. If
our self-understanding is that we were created to love God and enjoy
His presence, we will no longer be bound by the mercurial affections
of this world. If we are willing to submit our own understanding to
God’s revelation of Himself in His holy word, and in the Word
incarnate, Jesus Christ, then we will no longer feel the need to
defend our own opinions.
To what in your life are
you holding so tightly that it has you firmly in its grip? What do
you fear to surrender to the will and desires of God? It may not be
something that the rest of the world would consider wrong. It may
even have the appearance of self-denial, but the thought of letting
go of it is terrifying to you. If you keep holding on, it will
prevent you from following where Christ Jesus has led the way. It
will keep you from fully committing yourself to the love of God. If
you surrender it, you will open yourself to the love of God from
which nothing in all of creation can separate you. Isn’t that truly
the longing of our hearts - to really know the love of God and find
our lives in Him?
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