As we complete the 18th week after Pentecost, we also celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (this feast was celebrated on Wednesday the 14th of September).

Our Epistle reading is again taken from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. He writes:

I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I will not treat God’s gracious gift as pointless.

These are such very very insightful words. Paul truly had a sense of Who Jesus Is and how we humans are connected to Him.

Our second reading is taken from Mark’s Gospel (8:34-9:1). In this passage the doctrine of the Cross is shared. Mark writes:

If a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and follow in my steps. Whoever would preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will preserve it…. What can a man offer in exchange for his life?

When you listen to these two readings together, truly Paul’s words are a personal expression of his life. To be crucified with Christ, as Paul exclaimed, means that he voluntarily accepted the challenges of life as Jesus did and willingly embraced them as a means of growing in his union with and likeness of Jesus. Paul understood that our life’s challenges are the cross given to us to help us spiritually grow. The way that we respond to our unique cross determines its value in helping us come to the fullness of life.

One might ask, What does Paul mean when he writes that his life is now “a life of faith in the Son of God?” He clearly means that he is not ashamed of the Son of Man and that he freely and voluntarily embraces the Jesus Way of Living. Paul was willing to lose his life for the sake of his belief in Jesus and His message. There was nothing more important to him than to live like Jesus lived. Why? Because he came to believe that Jesus revealed to us the way that God intended humans to live in order to achieve the fullness of life.

What is also a very evident message from both of these readings is this: our response to God’s revelation about how we should live in order to be granted the fullness of life must be a free and voluntary process. Jesus clearly states, “if a person WISHES to come after me.” God never forces us to live in a certain way. He only encourages us to freely respond to His revelation.