Father Christopher Zugger

There was once a Muslim prince who had three hundred and sixty-five wives in his harem. He loved to eat and have a good time. One day he visited a Christian monastery. There he met a young monk. The prince looked at the monk with compassion and sorrow. “What a great sacrifice you are making,” he said to the ascetic. “You have given up marriage, children, good food, and drink for the rest of your life.” But the monk objected, “Your sacrifice is greater,” he said. “How’s that?” asked the prince. The monk replied, “Because I have renounced that which is temporary so as to gain eternal life, while you have renounced the eternal for what is temporary.”

So here is the question for us on the Sunday after the exaltation of the Cross. What do I value? What is truly important to me? What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 

Forbes puts out a list every year of the 100 richest Americans. Most of us have no idea who they are. ESPN can list the 50 greatest athletes. How great will any of them be in 25 years? The New York Times has a list of the 25 greatest movie stars of the 21^st century, a century that is not even 25 years old. The Hill publishes the names of the 10 most powerful politicians in America. Well given how long some politicians currently like to hold onto power, I guess some of them will still be around in 25 years, but not all of them!

Who among any of these people will be remembered in 100 years? Who will care in a century from now, as to who won the Grand Slam of tennis, or Super Bowl 25, or the World Series this year? How long can you stay on as Speaker of the House, or president? How much money can take to the Last Judgment? What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Yet this is what we are taught matters: fame, money, physical strength, power. We are taught to accumulate all of those things, and lots of stuff, but Jesus says we have to lose our lives in order to save our lives.

At the end of the Gospel reading, Jesus says this interesting sentence: Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power. Well obviously, Jesus was wrong – all of those people who were around that day have long since died and God did not come with power.

Or was He wrong? Because when did God come with power?

On the Cross and in the Resurrection. The pagan Roman centurion proclaims after the Passion ends “Truly, this was the Son of God.” Ironically, it is in the great humiliation of the Cross that Jesus is revealed completely as the self-giving love of God. It is in the darkness and wind of Calvary, in the silence of the tomb, in the awesome resurrection, that God’s full power is shown.

Muslims have trouble accepting that Jesus is God because they are taught that God disdains the human body, and is too powerful to be contained in the womb of a woman. And that is precisely the core of Christianity – that God so loves the human race, that he willingly enters into the womb of a woman, willingly takes on the human condition completely – along with hunger, thirst, pain, friendship, joy, love, family – in order to have us come to Him eternally.

Every morning I say a prayer which asks that after my death God will not reject me when I first see His glory but rather that He admit me into His presence. I do not want the Son of Man to be ashamed of me when he does return in glory, and I pray and hope that I live in such a way that at the end of my life I can live with God, and at the end of time, God will admit me into the presence of the life-giving Trinity and unite my soul and body to live with Him forever.

What have I given up? What is temporary, or what is eternal? We all have goals and hopes for this life. We are all called to do something with the talents and gifts that God has given us. But those goals and hopes must reflect what is eternal. We must treat others as God wants us to treat them. We must use our gifts for what will help others. We must be brave in the face of a fallen and sinful world that seems to have lost its bearings. We must be people who love, not condemn, and who love as God the Father loves.

Jesus loved us so much that He willingly went into the Passion and onto the cross. May we each have the courage to go forward, and upward for what is important for God, and thus for our own souls. May we live so as to transform this parish into a shining city on a spiritual hill, one that will cast its light on souls, and bring them closer to God. And may we never be ashamed of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ is among us.