Today's Gospel

Get Comfortable with Uncertainty

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark 8:34-38 and 9:1. "And Jesus called to Him the multitude with His disciples, and He said to them, 'If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the angels.' And He said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.'" What jumps out at you today? Jesus is making His requirements clear. Very often people talk about religion. They talk about Christianity. They talk about God. They talk about the requests we have of God.

But God has requests of us, and He has requirements of us. And the kingdom has requirements. There are requirements to discipleship. And Jesus is making it clear to people. He's making it clear yesterday, "Hey, I'm going to suffer and I'm going to die and I'm going to rise from the dead." And He's making it clear today what His expectations are of other people. "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. Deny himself, take up his cross, follow Me." When was the last time you denied yourself? Intentionally denied yourself. And why did you do it? Was it for spiritual reasons? Maybe you did some fasting for spiritual reasons. Or maybe it was for vanity reasons. Maybe you did some fasting because you want to look better. Maybe you wanted to do something, but your spouse wanted to do something else, so you denied yourself. Or your child wanted to do something, so you denied yourself. When was the last time you denied yourself actively, proactively, intentionally? And that's to take up our cross. And that is the path of following Jesus.

And so, I think often we think about, "Okay, we want to be with Jesus." Great. But do we want to follow Jesus? And where is He leading? Different places every day, and we don't know. And we live in a culture where we like to know, right? We like to know what the plan is and where are we going and what time are we doing this? What time are we doing [inaudible]? And Jesus is like, "Come on, guys, let's go." "Where?" "We'll just go." "When will we be there?" "I'll let you know." We don't like that uncertainty, right? We have this sort of love of fake certainty. And we prefer fake certainty over true uncertainty. And the truth is, most things are uncertain. And Jesus is saying, "Come on, follow Me into an uncertain situation, an uncertain afternoon, uncertain week, uncertain year, toward a very certain future." The question is, can we get comfortable with the uncertainty? And the only way to get comfortable with the uncertainty is to get confident in the leader. You're confident in the leader, you can be comfortable in the uncertainty. Have a great day. Remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.

I hope you're enjoying the daily gospel reflections. So, one of the things I love doing–spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I encourage you to do that today.