Paradox

Homily for Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Paradox lies at the heart of our Christian faith. God is three persons in one. Jesus is fully human and fully divine. God is all-powerful, and yet we are truly free. Jesus gives us eternal life through his death. Humankind has tried to iron out the wrinkles of paradox in our faith down through the ages. They are looking for a simpler and less painful way to enter God’s reign. However, God is so far beyond the limits of our imagination that only these types of paradoxes can draw into a fuller understanding of truth.

Today’s Gospel invites us into another of these paradoxes. “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake… will save it.” Like water slipping through hands that grasp and cling, a life lived for self-protection and self-aggrandizement will slip away. If we are not giving God our life, we will lose it. We will not find the satisfaction, the joy, or the peace for which we so desperately long. The human person is made to be poured out in love – love of God and love of those whom God places in our lives.

A life that avoids the cross will be far more painful than a life that embraces it and gives itself in love to others. Anything we give over to God will be transformed, just as the pain of the cross becomes an instrument of salvation and joy. A famous quotation from Francis Cardinal George of Chicago reminds us: “The only thing that we will take with us when we die is that which we have given away.”

Jesus gave us his life. God gave back that life in the resurrection. Jesus gives us himself in the Eucharist. In return, we accept him with love. The love that we express in our service to our neighbor is returned to us a hundredfold either later in life or in the next. The great prayer of St. Francis reminds us that it is in giving that we receive and in pardoning that we are pardoned and in dying that we are born to eternal life.