“Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Mt. 10:39
This passage, which we hear in our Gospel today, has always been one of my favorites. I’ve always interpreted it to mean we ought to be detached from worldly things and be willing to give up everything to follow Christ. This time around, however, it hit me in a completely different way.
A little backstory. These past few weeks my prayer has been filled with consolations and graces, such as gratitude, joy, and peace. I would love to say that’s normal … but shucks, it’s not! As a result of feeling so close to the Lord, I have found myself longing to distance myself from the responsibilities and cares of being in the world, seek solitude in prayer, and simply be alone with God. At first, I felt that this was an appropriate response, that of course I ought to yearn more and more for God and only God.
In one sense, this attitude has been good and incredibly fruitful, but what I didn’t realize was that on a certain level I have still been “seeking to preserve my life,” as heard in St. Luke’s telling of the above Gospel passage (17:33). In other words, I have unconsciously been rather self-serving during this time of grace, wanting to cling to the consolation, store it up, and keep it for myself.
So when I read the Gospel for today, the words took on a completely new meaning: “…whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Instead of simply hearing this as a call to detachment and denial of self to follow Christ, I heard,
“Lose your life for love of Me and come find true life in My Heart;
Immerse yourself in My immense love for you,
but let it transform you and stir you to love with My love.”
This call to love others with the love of the Heart of God is part of what I’ve been running away from. Because honestly, being compassionate and merciful (how God loves) is not my forte, even with people I care about, let alone every random person who happens to cross my path. And even with grace, it’s still really hard! Looking back over the past few weeks, I see now that I had fallen into thinking I could just shut myself off from everyone and everything and just try to love God and that would be enough.
But if I have truly found my life in the Lord’s Heart, this Heart whose love fills me to overflowing, there’s no possible way I can keep it to myself and not share it with others! The Lord told St. Faustina, “My Heart overflows with great mercy for souls” (Diary, 367), and this is how we are called to live, loving with His Heart, overflowing with mercy for everyone around us. One of my favorite poems presents this image beautifully:
What use is it, Lord, if I receive You
and do not bear You to the world?
“Mary went in haste…”
What use is it if I join myself to You in love
and do not love my brother?
“They’ll know you are my disciples …”
… what use is it if You come to me
and I refuse You to my neighbor?
What use is it, Lord, if You fill me
and I do not overflow?”[1]
I was having a conversation with my sister the other day about this whole concept of dwelling in the Lord’s Heart and learning how to love like Him, and she said something very profound. It was something along the lines of, “It seems like once you ask for the grace to live in the Heart of Christ, the Lord always gives you the gift of beginning to love others with His love.”
And it was just a couple weeks ago that Pope Francis took this to another level, calling us to run to the confessional, where “Jesus welcomes us with all our sinfulness, to give us a new heart, capable of loving as he loves.”[2] We have the capacity, as human beings, to love deeply and compassionately, and by seeking God’s grace, especially in confession, our motivations to love are purified and our hearts are conformed to His Heart, becoming “new,” and more capable of loving as we were meant to love, like Him.
This week, follow our Holy Father’s advice, and go. Go to the place where the Lord promised to flood souls with His grace and mercy: the confessional. There our brokenness is healed by the tenderness of our God who loves us; there our hearts are changed and enabled to love like Him — and in loving the way He loves, we become more fully who we were created to be.
By proactively and frequently entering into this encounter of grace in confession, we are essentially saying, “Yes, Lord, take my life,” giving Him permission to transform us.
By choosing daily to live in the Heart of our God, this Heart overflowing with mercy for us, we find true life and are filled with mercy.
And in order to keep receiving more, we have to make room, letting what we have been given spill over in our thoughts, words, and actions.
If we allow this ripple effect of mercy to become a way of life, we will truly be overflowing, loving with His Heart.
