Fr. Tony’s Mid-week
Message
April 2, 2014
Losing our False Selves
“Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” (Luke 17:33)
Jesus teaches us to win
by losing. He says to give up our life
in order to find it. He says and shows
us that by dying on a cross we can find our true life.
This is not, as many have
believed over the centuries, a question of giving up our bodily life, our
“flesh,” in order to save our spiritual life, or our “souls.” God created us as corporeal beings, with body
and flesh, and declared his creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Even though St. Paul uses the word “flesh”
as a metaphor for that part of us that resists God (Romans 8:5), we must
remember that our salvation came through God taking on this flesh of ours
(becoming incarnate, according to the
Nicene Creed, cf. John 1:14) and embracing all it means to be human apart from
resisting God (“yet without sin” as Hebrews 4:15 puts it). Flesh is good, and part of what God wants us
to be.
What Jesus is saying when
he says we must lose our life in order to save it is this: we must give up our false self, our
ego-driven self that tries to control, to judge, and in the process distorts
the image of God reflected in us from our creation. It is only thus that we can discover our
true self, the one that more and more fully reflects the divine image, and
recovers the beauty and glory found in the face and body of the risen Jesus himself. This is the “treasure buried in the field” to
which Jesus likens the Reign of God (Matthew 13:44). This is why Jesus calls us to turn around
our hearts and minds, and recognize that God’s Reign is already in our midst
(Matthew 4:17).
It’s all about a change
in perspectives, in direction, and orientation of the heart. Our ego does not
want to let go and let God. It does not
want to win by losing. It wants, rather,
to win by winning, by powering over resistance, by control and force. Our false selves and skewed consciousness
divide things that are a unity for God into opposites, and want to control and
judge. They want to externalize
everything, reduce the right and the good to rules and ceremonies, and
ultimately, to blame others for bad, and scapegoat them. That’s just the way we
are when we live in our false selves.
The Church hasn’t
helped. Legalism in canon law, a common
theology that places an intervening God “out there” rather an implicit God
behind and under everything, and a sectarian urge that divides the “us” of ‘orthodox’
or ‘catholic’ Christians from the "them" of 'heathens' and 'heretics'—all these tend to foster
our false selves and divided egos. But
the mystic tradition of the Church and its sacramental life, and saintly souls
such as Francis of Assisi or Julian of Norwich who sought to follow Jesus more
than holding on to his brand-name—all these have helped foster the call of
Jesus to every generation to lose our divided, judging selves and false
ego-driven consciousness and simply enjoy and reflect the love and beauty of God
that is at the heart of all creation, including ourselves.
Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+
(I've been reading a lot of Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton lately. None of these ideas are new, but I am trying to express them in my own words.)
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