Whoever wishes to come after me

8 AUGUST (Mt 16,24-28)

All religions of this world, all philosophies, anthropologies, psychologies, sciences, technologies, arts, techniques, spiritual strategies and everything else that come from men must be abandoned, left, repudiated if one wants to follow Jesus. Denying means abandoning, leaving, divorcing, dissolving every tie, separating in a stable and final way, with no return back. From a world we are called to enter into another world. From the thought of man you have to jump into the thought of God, in order to be conducted, driven, oriented, captured and imprisoned by it. If this step is not done, we do not follow Jesus. Apparently, formally we are with Him. Inwardly, vitally and structurally we are with us.

On the other hand, from the first moment, from the beginning of his preaching, Jesus cried it out with clarity and firmness of Holy Spirit. One cannot go after him and remain in his thoughts, in his religiosity of yesterday, in the religion that has accompanied us until today, in the structure of the faith of the past. We need a powerful conversion. We need a strong faith in the Gospel. The Word of Jesus must be the only one that guides us, leads us, moves us, orients us and towers over us. Self-denying and emptying the personal mind of all thoughts of the past about God and all his other ordering in order to get into the perfection of truth and grace. Walking after Jesus for us must only have one meaning: putting our feet in his footsteps so as to be able to always follow him, day and night listening to his voice, letting us be renewed by his grace, making us be conquered by his virtues.

After all denying oneself for us should signify one thing: removing from our chest the heart of stone and in its place grafting the heart of Christ to be able to always love with his heart, according to the demands of divine love. Pulping our mind and in its place putting the knowledge, the wisdom and the intelligence of the Holy Spirit. With the divine light of the Spirit of the Lord it is always possible to enter the Father’s will, listen to his every desire and fulfill all his works. It is clear that this type of conversion is not accomplished in a day, it takes months and years before you can reach an acceptable level of conversion. If this truth does not guide the mind and heart, feelings and will, always a man will always return to his old way of life of yesterday. He will never persevere in his journey toward the fulfillment, achievement, each in a specific way of his own truth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct. Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Jesus does not want us to choose in an irrational and illogical way, with neither reasons and nor true motivations. Faith has always a rational component. It is not a sterilized thought. It is not a purely ritual and formal religion. It is not even a baptized anthropology of Christianity rather strange and bizarre. He asks us to put up on a scale time and eternity, assessing their weight well. He asks us to live time without him in order to have a blessed eternity with Him in his Paradise. Without Him, there is an eternity of hell, damnation, darkness that never end and will never fail. Beyond all, rationally speaking, no one who is sane might choose darkness forever giving up light forever, hunger forever and satiety forever. No one with a bit of intelligence should choose not to deny himself and not to follow Jesus Christ. This is faith: a rational act on the revelation; that is, on the purest truth, on what our life is.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us wise and intelligent.