Of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. This is the famous chapter 16. Jesus said to his disciples, disciples, if a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in my footsteps. Whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would a man show if he were to gain the entire world and yet ruin himself in the process? What can a man offer in exchange for himself, his whole and entire self? The son of man will come with his father's glory accompanied by his angels. When he does, he will repay each man according to his conduct. I assure you, among those standing here, there are some who will not experience death before they see the son of man come in his kingship, And this is the gospel of the lord.
The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This is another text of our blessed lord which you don't find often, if at all, on your Christmas cards or on your Easter cards. This sort of doctrine is not the sort of thing we like to hear. Now this paradoxical statement of our blessed lord, when he says, whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, that's the keyword there, will find it. It's a very strange see, this sounds crazy.
That's what we really mean by a paradox. A paradox means something which on the surface looks to be absurd and yet has profound truth in it. And Chesterton, of course, was the genius for that sort of thing. But I've just been reading Solzhenitsyn, Malcolm Ruggedych, and C. S.
Lewis. And it's just amazing how all three of them straight stressed this aspect. In his his address in London when he received the peace prize not a peace prize, but a prize for the advancement of religion, he said he emphasized the fact that under the terroristic government of Russia, a man was most free when he was in jail or up in in Siberia someplace in a concentration camp. Now he ought to know he was there. And that's a theme that you find in Solzhenitsyn's works if you've read them, that there are times when our greatest freedom is to be found in a jail, in a cell, in a dungeon?
Yes, on the gallows. And Muggeridge now remember, when I'm reading of Muggeridge, it was written in around 06/1965 when he had no thought of becoming a Catholic, believe me, just the reverse. But he had a tremendous grip on this this truth, that if you wanna save yourself, you've got to lose yourself for Christ's sake. Now that's the important word there. And it as I say, the world has been filled with martyrs for any cause.
But our blessed lord says, for my sake you see how arrogant that is if it's not true? You can't say Christ was just a good man and pull this kind of stuff. And, so Mugridge, one of the first truths and he he realized this even before he got to be a good Christian. See, in '65 or '68, he was a Christian and a very fervent one. But this was the great truth that he insists upon in page after page, that we can only we can only find ourselves when we lose ourselves in Jesus Christ.
And with Lewis, that's practically the theme song of his writings, CS Lewis. But it does sound so paradoxical, so paradoxical. But there's nothing new about this. The point is that Christ said, you have to give your entire self to him. You can't hold back.
You can't compromise. You can't negotiate. You either you either take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ or you don't. You can't put her on an electric cart with a storage battery and just be a chauffeur. You've got to carry your own cross behind Jesus Christ because you're gonna find the cross.
You're going to have the cross whether you like it or not. We all know that. Anyone who thinks differently is crazy, silly, absurd, unrealistic. But the point is carrying the cross of Jesus Christ, carrying our cross with Jesus. And the point is that when we give ourselves wholly to Jesus Christ, we find ourselves that's the it's see, this is not a negative doctrine.
This is not a philosophy of pessimism. This is a doctrine of salvation. What is the basic cause for so much depression these days that is bringing on so many suicides, and if not suicide, at least terrible unhappiness? It's the fact that so many people find life without meaning, without goal. They look it's not just what happens to them.
They look around and see what's happening to other people. They read Dostoevsky where he in his brother's Karamazov, where you have this tremendous dramatization of what we would say god's injustice. And the point is the innocent children suffer and how they suffer. Dostoevsky gives some tremendously spectacular examples. These are facts of life.
And what do you do if you if you don't turn your life over to god? What do you turn it over to? In other words, as Frankl points out in his man's search for meaning, our salvation is knowing what life is all about. And he here's another one who insists that in those concentration camps, theirs where some people found their greatest freedom. I'm really these these are pragmatic witnesses.
That is witnesses based upon hard, cruel experience. They have tried it. They have tried it. Muggeridge makes no secret of the fact that he has tried most of the things that life has to offer as goals. He's tried them all, and he succeeded extremely well.
And yet he says, you don't find yourself till you lose yourself in Jesus Christ. This is not an easy doctrine. This is a doctrine of self renunciation. But you see, that's negative. What we must emphasize is the positive of giving myself to Jesus Christ.
That's the point. It's emptying myself not to have an empty something, not to have a vacuum. That's negative. And there can't be such a thing as a negative virtue. Can't be.
So the point isn't the the emphasis isn't upon denial. The emphasis is not upon martyrdom. The emphasis is not upon renouncing myself. The the the the essence of this doctrine is god, and I am invited to give myself to god or I lose myself. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen.