In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 130, we pray: I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts in his word." For me, trust and love are synonymous! If I trust God, I love God. And if I love God, I trust God.
For me, Jesus, the new Adam, models trust in God. He said "yes" to God to the point of death on the cross. The first Adam, on the other hand, says "no" to God, believing that in saying "no" to God true freedom would be found. The opposite is true, and Jesus models that opposite, namely, that in saying "yes" to God we find freedom. It is in losing one's live that one saves it, Jesus teaches us, and in saving one's life that we lose it. He also teaches that the grain of wheat must die to bear fruit. Every day we have opportunities to die to self, to lose ourselves, to bury the "grain of wheat," for the sake of the other, giving our all for the sake of the common good, as Jesus gave His all on the cross and rose to new life, to wholeness, to ultimate freedom.
Am I willing to say "yes," that is, to die to self, as often as necessary each day and thus rise to new life, to a new sense of freedom? Or am I a person who sets out each day to say "no," believing as Adam and Eve did, that by saying "no" I am free? Jesus said "yes" to dying on the cross and in that dying rose to new life, to new freedom, and showed us the depth, the height, the width, and length of God's love. To what lengths, depths, heights, widths will I go to love as God loves? Am I coming to realize that it is by saying "yes" to "losing one's life" that one "saves it" and that, yes, the grain of wheat needs to die to bear fruit that will last, a fruit that includes authentic freedom and a rising?
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