Friday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

“Lose Yourself and You Will Find Yourself”

We spend only today in the book of the prophet Nahum, which at only three chapters is one of the shortest books of scripture (though there are several prophets with three chapters but Hagai at two and Obadiah with only one, are the shortest books). The opening passage of today’s first reading from Nahum 1:15 is something of a direct quote from Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news,” so beloved in the Christmas liturgy. It is pretty much the only nice thing that Nahum has to say in his short prophecy, a lament over Nineveh, which in Nahum’s time was no longer repentant as it was during Jonah’s. And the responsorial psalm from Deuteronomy 32 isn’t any cheerier!

So we turn to today’s gospel passage in search of a respite but, alas, there doesn’t seem much comfort to be had there either. For this rather well-known passage from Matthew 16 has been the source of no little angst over the centuries. It seems to say to us that following Jesus will involve no small amount of grief and pain: self-denial; taking up our cross (What is that?, we cry!); even losing our life. And, as if that isn’t bad enough, we’re going to be judged for it all and, we can only assume from the context, rather severely! It all seems quite more than a bit daunting. It seems to fall among those (quite a few, if truth be told) gospel passages where we say, if that’s the good news then please don’t tell me the bad!

Perhaps, however, there is another way to read this. As I write this, I sit on a lovely porch in Vermont during a gorgeous afternoon on a brief retreat I’m on this week. In front of me are many beautiful well-tended flowers in full bloom in the sunshine and buzzing around them all are a multitude of bees of various types, mostly bumblebees. They are all quite busy, as bees tend to be, hard at work gathering nectar for their hives and pollinating these plants for the future of the whole world! We are all so dependent on the labor of bees! Yet, if we were able to ask them and they were able to reply, I’m sure they would tell us that they do not consider this any labor at all. I’m certain they would tell us that for them it is an absolute joy, that they would have it no other way. It doesn’t matter how much they may seem to have to deny themselves, how heavy the cross their labors may seem to be to others, how much they appear to others to just be losing themselves in this work. For them, there is nothing they would rather do, nothing you could possibly give them that would tempt them to abandon their labors. For they are perfectly fulfilled, perfectly at peace and filled with perfect joy in doing it. Because anything else, even gaining the whole world, would come at the dreadful cost of losing their very selves.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson from the very busy bees. It all depends on our attitude. If we could become ready and willing to simply accept everything that comes to us, resisting either judging it or labeling it as good or bad in any way, but see it rather as somehow, in some very great and mysterious way we can never now know, as a wonderful gift from God given to us out of great love, our entire lives would forever change for the good. This is especially true if we would come to accept all people this way. We would come to fully understand Paul in Romans 8:28 where he says, “We know that all things work together for the good, for those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose.” By daring to lose our self, losing what we think we need, what we think we know, who we think we are, what we think we want, we would actually then find our true self that, for some also deeply mysterious reason that we cannot know now, has been hidden from us all this time.

God stands ready and most able in Jesus his son to reveal to you your truest self. Once you find it, then everything becomes easy for, “My yoke is easy and my burden light,” and “You will find rest for your souls.” All it takes is admitting that your ways (and the yoke, the heavy yoke you’ve burdened yourself with) haven’t born real fruit and the willingness to begin to give up all those ways you have approached the world and your life in it and become willing to simply begin to approach everything and everyone (including yourself!) with only love and the complete acceptance love implies. The Beatles were right, all you need is love.