NOTES for Mar 8:34-9:1

"If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." What does it mean to deny oneself? After all, it would seem that our selfhood, our personhood, is the only thing that belongs to us directly, the thing we deal with every minute; to part with it is something unthinkable. We receive an answer to this question in the Letter to the Galatians (Gal 2:16-20). At some point the awareness comes that "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." But it comes only after the long ascetic labor of renouncing one's own will, nourished by a burning desire to become like Christ in everything. And the chief way we can become like Him is to ascend the cross, our own cross.

Yet it would be wrong to think that our personhood is indifferent to the Lord, or that He could want to level out our selfhood. When it is said that God will be all in all, it means that this "all," in which God will be "all," remains in its own identity; otherwise one could simply say that God will be all. But while remaining unique, it will have no place within itself for anything opposed to God or fighting against God. Everything will be directed toward God, not away from Him.

And the beginning of this is laid down already now. We must clearly understand what an "adulterous generation" is and consciously separate ourselves from it. Most of all, we must bear witness to our faith before it. At times it feels better to keep silent somewhere so as not to start arguments... but that is always betrayal.