Denying the Self and Carrying the Cross!

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Deut 30:15-20; Lk 9:22-25

Today’s Gospel emphasizes the necessity of assuming newer selves as disciples of Christ. 

Jesus gives us two tasks that highlight the newness of our lives as his disciples: denying ourselves and carrying our cross daily. 

Why does Jesus want us to deny ourselves? Because we are disciples of Christ, we cannot remain in our old selves. We need to put on a new self if we wish to follow Christ. 

Why should we carry our cross daily? Because only by doing that do we bring imitation of Christ to completion. Disciples can only inherit the Master’s patrimony. 

If we may understand it right while following Jesus, renouncing our old ways complements the carrying of our cross daily. 

The reflective and insightful response of Clavius in his final conversation with the innkeeper in the movie Risen reminds us of how denying the self prepares one to follow Jesus by carrying his/her daily cross. (In the movie, Clavius is a Roman tribune who supervises Jesus’ crucifixion and the investigation into what happens to Jesus’ body. After finding the tomb empty, Clavius’s perspective is changed forever). When the innkeeper asks the pensive Clavius if he ever truly believes all this, the tribune says, ‘I believe I can never be the same.’ The moment shows the disciple in the soldier who is transformed forever. 

Let us pray that we may be transformed by the requirements of discipleship to imitate Jesus better.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar