Friday, August 10, 2012

Hate For Life

St. Lawrence feast today. Astonishing words of Jesus in the feast's Gospel: "Whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life." (Jn 12). Hating owns life and at the same time preserving it for later, for eternal life. Quite a difficult idea to grasp and comprehend. What does it mean actually to hate one's life in this world? The Hindu saying comes to mind - 'Only fool builds a house on a bridge'...


Maybe this saying teaches us that our life here on earth is not the ultimate goal and all means we use to preserve it and cling to it, forgetting about the ultimate goal, which is heaven? Maybe Jesus warns us about idolizing our life here on earth and forgetting what lies beyond and awaits us? Maybe St. Augustine understood what Jesus meant when he said - 'Love and do what you will':

Once for all, then, a short precept is given you:
Love, and do what you will:
whether you hold your peace,
through love hold your peace;
whether you cry out, through love cry out;
whether you correct, through love correct;
whether you spare, through love do you spare:
let the root of love be within,
of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
(St. Augustine's seventh homily on the First Epistle of John, paragraph 8)

Maybe it is all about pruning in our earthly lives which cripples us in our journey to the Father's House in heaven. Maybe it is all about correct priorities in our lives, sifting through what is really important and what is not. Maybe it is all about yearning for eternal life more than to grabbing to our daily life and to everything we deem important to us, unwilling to let go anything which is killing eternal life in us?

I wonder how you understand these words of our Lord. And how you can apply them to your own life and your understanding of it in the perspective of eternity.

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