Before we can take up our cross individually to follow Jesus, we must first renounce ourselves. Why is this so?
Simply put, in today’s first reading we learn of a people who would and did not renounce themselves. While it appears they were one people, in the sense that they spoke and understood one another in the same language, they were from being united as One before God for they decided to be independent of Him or rather far from Him. With a Godless people, it is only a matter of time when evil brews and takes hold, scheming themselves into ruin! For they would surely do as they pleased without conscience. If the Lord our God had not stepped in, then it they would have surely scattered themselves into disarray and perhaps even death.
For us to be truly One people under God, we must choose to renounce ourselves, so that the Lord our God can fill us with His grace, His Holy Spirit. By taking up our Cross and following Jesus we identify with His suffering love of us, and we choose to likewise lay down our lives for others if necessary. For we know that if we die in Him, we will surely rise in Him! By our baptism we had already been inserted into His life, death and resurrection. Through Him we become One Body in Him now and forever. Amen
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First reading
Genesis 11:1-9 ·
The tower of Babel
Throughout the earth men spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary. Now as they moved eastwards they found a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them in the fire.’ (For stone they used bricks, and for mortar they used bitumen). ‘Come,’ they said ‘let us build ourselves a town and a tower with its top reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the whole earth.’
Now the Lord came down to see the town and the tower that the sons of man had built. ‘So they are all a single people with a single language!’ said the Lord. ‘This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.’ The Lord scattered them thence over the whole face of the earth, and they stopped building the town. It was named Babel therefore, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth. It was from there that the Lord scattered them over the whole face of the earth.
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Gospel
Mark 8:34-9:1
Anyone who loses his life for my sake will save it
Jesus called the people and his disciples to him and said:
‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to win the whole world and ruin his life? And indeed what can a man offer in exchange for his life? For if anyone in this adulterous and sinful generation is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ And he said to them, ‘I tell you solemnly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.’
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