9-8-15 - Back to the Real World?

If you’re having some trouble transitioning into the fall schedule from the summer lull, Sunday’s gospel reading should help us come down with a bump. Jesus tells his followers that they have signed on for tough duty:

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

I don’t know if summertime is akin to “gaining the whole world,” but I tend to see it as a time of lowered responsibility, lessened engagement with tasks and intentions, loosening up on self-denial (as my Labor Day breakfast of bread, butter and jam will attest). Maybe you’re one of those marvelous saints who went on incredible mission trips this summer, but I fear I’ve gotten so good at living in the “now” this summer, I won’t remember where I left my cross to take it up again.

Is that what the “program year” is about, taking up our cross? In some measure, yes. We dial down the lazy, and quicken the pace of our days. We reengage the world more fully. We recommit ourselves to discerning what the Holy Spirit is up to around us and join in as we are led to participate in the mission of God. None of that may involve putting our physical lives at risk, but it does entail putting God’s ways of meeting the world’s needs ahead of our own.

Today, let’s spend some time in the presence of God and ask where we’re being directed to share our energies and gifts and resources. As we sharpen our attention (if, like me, you’ve let yours slacken…) we find we are still called to live in the moment, only perhaps to indwell it more fully.
We let our lives be filled with the Spirit’s energy and live for the sake of the gospel rather than for ourselves. We dwell in the Realm of God – which is the most real world there can possibly be.