Mark 8:34-38; 9:1
The Lord said: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In our Gospel reading today, our Lord tells us that anyone who wishes to be His disciple must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him. And then, the Fathers tell us, lest anyone wonder what He meant by denying ourselves, He continues by saying:
For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?
We see many examples of what these words means in the lives of the martyrs. You have, no doubt, read again and again of the account where a particular saint is taken prisoner and given the choice between renouncing Christ or death. And, understanding that they will gain nothing, but rather lose everything, if they decide to reject eternal life for the sake of continuing in this life for a little while longer, they choose Christ.
This choice is illustrated very well in a story that is recounted from the life of Sir Thomas Moore. Thomas was a powerful figure in the court of the notorious English king Henry the Eighth. Henry, as you will recall, wished to divorce his lawful wife Catherine in order to marry Anne Bolyne. When his request was refused by the Pope, Henry decided to break with Rome and set up his own church, with himself as its head. And he required his nobles and other important men at his court to take an oath saying that they agreed with this.
Thomas refused, even though to do so meant death. His wife pleaded with him to do so, saying it was better to live. ‘And how many years might I gain by this?’ he asked her. ‘Why, as much as twenty,’ she replied. ‘As much as twenty?’ he responded. ‘Wife, it would seem a poor bargain to live those few years in this world in exchange for eternal life in the next!’
Sir Thomas Moore was not, of course, an Orthodox Christian, living as he did in the Latin West. But he nevertheless understood well what or Lord meant when He asked what it profitted a man to gain the whole world if it came at the cost of forfeiting eternal life, it would seem to me.
And, of course, we must also keep in mind that the promises of this life are false. A man, for example, may think to himself that he will take the good things of this life and not worry about eternity. We may think here usefully of the parable of the Rich Fool. He thought he had many years of easy living ahead of him, but instead his soul was demanded of him that very night.
We also may recall here the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Forty Christian soldiers were cast in a freezing lake in winter. On the shore their tormentors had blazing fires and warm baths. All they had to do was renounce Christ and they could leave the icy waters and enter into the warm water on shore instead. One poor man finally yielded to the temptation. He threw down his cross, denied Christ instead of himself, and left the lake. But the shock to his system of going from cold to hot was too much for his body and he immediately died. He gave up the crown of martyrdom and eternal life and didn’t even get so much as a minute of comfortable life in this world in return.
This is why we must stay strong and fight against the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. For it is only by denying ourselves and rejecting them that we find our true selves and find our way to what God created us for: eternal life with Him in Heaven. Amen.
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