To Give Up One's Life

What does it look like to give up one's life?  


As I sit to reflect on this question, I am taken to something that happened earlier today.  Already, I have begun to prepare my room for the big move which will be here very soon.  As I was starting to sort this and that little thing, into different piles, I came across a thumb drive that I had not seen for some time.  Curiously, I plugged it into my computer and found pictures that a dear friend of mine had taken at my ordination.  As I glanced through the different photos, I was at first touched by some of the difficult memories of friendships lost and lives changed, but then I started to see the pictures of the ordination itself. Slowly, as each picture came into focus and was fitted to the screen, something deep inside me was awakened and I began to feel the intense and passionate emotion that was lived that day, the joy, the accomplishment, the nervousness and so many others.  With each passing picture, however, I started to remember something else.  Primarily, I became centered on the immensity of that day and the great love which enveloped me and my brothers as we came before the community in a faith response to the call made unto us by Our Lord, Jesus.  This same love that has breathed peace into the chaos at creation, was now infused in each one of us as we emerged from that church, no longer men of this world, but men wholly dedicated to the will of God in the service of His poor and most abandoned.  It was the fulfillment of a call that has continued to grow and deepen as I participate more and more in the lives of so many to whom God has called me to go.  As I reflected on these pictures, and as I watched Bro. Orlando Castillo in the movie "The Calling,"  I was reminded and gratified by the simple and true voice of Christ who so long ago spoke my name, and in whose giving up of self, i have found life.  


So what does it mean to give up one's life?  Simple, it means to live out my call as best as I can.  Not because I am forced to, but because in God, I have found freedom to do so.  Amen.