I will read Father Augustyn Pelanowski's commentary on tomorrow's gospel.
From the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Jesus began to explain to the disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem.
There the elders of the people, the high priests and scribes will cause Him much suffering and kill Him,
but on the third day He will rise again. Then Peter took Him aside and strongly admonished Him:
“May God protect you! Lord, this will surely not happen to You!” He turned around and said to
Peter, "Follow me, Satan! You disturb Me because you do not think according to God, but according to man.
Then Jesus said to the disciples: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny
himself; let him take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life
will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his life? Or what can
a man give in exchange for his life? So when the Son of Man comes with his
angels in the splendor of his Father's glory, then he will repay each according to his conduct.
He will not be glorified with Christ who has not endured the shame of Him.
Why did Jesus have to suffer so much? Why did he want to suffer so much? Why did he take a path
he knew would end in the cross on earth? Why does He finally tell us
to deny ourselves if we want to reign with Him? When there is a choice,
the most advantageous and convenient way out of trouble is chosen, but if
the most difficult one is chosen, it must have been the only one! There was no other choice. Just as
there is no other Messiah but Jesus, so there is no other way but this one: with one's own cross
on which one must die in spite of oneself, in spite of one's desires. If there was another way, Jesus
would have pointed it out, but there is only one way left: the way by dying! It is clearer than the sun
that Jesus' proposal is the only one and we will never find another, even as optimal.
Every friendship is a chain of sacrifices at the expense of a friend, every love is
really a hidden suffering, a collection of hurts and concessions. When we decide to love someone,
it will inevitably be necessary for us to die somehow.
You can die in different ways and there are different deaths: dying of love, dying of envy, of envy, of longing, of fear, of
fear, of care, of pain, of happiness. You can die
saving someone and die because you don't love anyone and want to live at the expense of others.
We die physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, intellectually, socially,
in the family, for the children, for the husband, for the wife, from loneliness.
There is a meaningful and senseless death. We're all dying hour by hour somehow.
We will all die physically someday, but before the hour of agony comes,
each day is a dying where we either die to sin or we die in sin.
Either sin kills eternal life in us, or we kill sin in ourselves. If we want to kill sin in us,
we must reach for the only weapon, the cross! The cross is that which makes sin impossible.
Such an attitude often brings persecution from people or even their deadly envy.
Jesus knew that His pure love, His unchanging will to love us and
save us from hypocrisy and moral darkness, would sooner or later lead to the reaction of people who
fear that admitting Jesus is right is acknowledging hypocrisy and sin.
So they preferred to kill Jesus rather than kill the sin in themselves. They rejected the cross,
saving the lie of their sinlessness. They acquitted themselves by blaming the Son
of God for ungodliness. Christ does not want us to suffer, He wants
us not to give up the truth when it comes to suffering because of it.
