During college, I experienced something of what our Gospel describes: whoever loses his life for Jesus' sake will find it.
On the outside, it looked like I was practicing Catholic. I even went to Mass every Sunday. "Do that all though college, and you're a shoo-in for sainthood," so I figured in my confusion.
But step by step I fell away from living my faith and was very far from the Lord in my heart and my interior life. Even the Masses I attended became increasingly blurry, just an hour-long blip in my weekly routine which effected no real change in my heart or change to my actions as I spiraled away from God in my real life and moral choices. Why?
Very simply: I feared suffering. I was afraid to be different than everyone else, different enough to truly follow Jesus. I was scared to death to lose my life, let go of my plans, give up my control to let God in, to do the Lord's will.
You see, I thought I had finally found my life - for me, high school was pretty rough but now I had made some awesome college friends, was excelling at college, and had high hopes for a career - it seemed in college as if the world was opening up to me. At least first...
But the thrill didn't last. Day after day, week after week, deep down something just seemed off, wrong, perhaps even very wrong. I was doing everything I wanted, I had total control of my schedule and my future. I was literally seeking happiness as my main priority, selfishly so, and yet, deep down I was very unhappy. I couldn't truly rest or enjoy anything. But I would never admit that, not to others, certainly not to myself.
For a while I tried to trick myself into thinking all was well: "Wait a minute, I'd tell myself in moments of emptiness, "I have truly found myself, I have found my life. This is just a little rough patch. If I can just get through this day, this week, this semester, this college, then I'll be happy, then all will be very well. But the relief never came. For a while I lost hope. I was using incredible amounts of energy to distract and keep myself distracted from the unhappiness and pointlessness of my self-centered life. And it didn't get me anywhere. I was lost, but trying to forget that reality, and instead pretend that I really had found myself.
Somehow Jesus got my attention. He kept calling my name, patiently and lovingly calling out to me, speaking louder and louder into my emptiness. I blocked Him out at first. I didn't want to hear His voice. But slowly I began to realize just how shallow my life was, how the constant distractions weren't really working. I began to desire a change, and thought that maybe I would even enjoy living the Gospel. And as Jesus kept calling, it was as if He stood before me at the crossroads of life: inviting me to Himself, drawing me closer, attracting me to Himself like some merciful super-magnet. In my heart, I felt Jesus inspire me to end a number of sinful patterns and friendships in my life. That awesome question began to bellow in my soul: "What if I really could live my Catholic faith?" To choose to intentionally live the Gospel. To repent. To lose my life. To lose it all, and to truly find the Jesus who had lovingly found me in utter despair, and showed me a better way.
I didn't respond immediately. I struggled to lose my life, clinging to control, to comfort, even in my unhappiness. But after a while I couldn't resist Jesus' offer any longer. My sins were too painful, I needed His healing, His comfort, too much. And so I turned to Him. Both in my heart and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I turned to Him. And O, how He comforted me! My heart could love again. I was alive again. The Gospel gave me true life, I had experienced true love, the love of God that I had been pushing away for so long.
Like any good physician, Jesus didn't just leave the sources of my prior sorrow or the scores of spiritual shrapnel I'd suffered stay within my wounded soul. He helped me - even though it was like ripping off an old band-aid from a hairy arm - to pretty quickly end those sinful friendships, change my habits, seek holiness. Perhaps you've experienced this in life - an awakening in your soul, in your spiritual life. A wave of grace which allows you to rise above many difficulties, and carries you through it all. I didn't care any more about being misunderstood for being different than everyone else. It didn't matter that I was being ridiculed in certain ways for living my faith in a highly secular college environment. I had found Jesus. I had found my life, even if I first had to lose it.
This experience of repentance and rejoicing in the Lord Jesus, which I hope you have experienced or pray that you will soon experience...this encounter with Jesus of our suffering, our death, and our rising with Jesus...this journey in life to lose our very lives so as to find them in Jesus...this is not the end. It is on the beginning. Or I might say, a new beginning of what had begun long ago at Baptism, if we were baptized as infants. Jesus' call to lose one's life so that it may be truly found is not a one-and-done experience. It is a journey we are invited to joyfully live daily, hourly, even at this very moment.
My "conversion" during college if you want to call it that took place 12 years ago, and a song from those years captures something of the process of conversion, of losing one's life and finding it in Jesus. The song depicts someone driving with a baby in the backseat in an out-of-control life, who hits a patch of black ice crash and its chorus goes, "Jesus take the wheel, take it from my hands, ‘cuz I can't do this on my own. I'm letting go, so give me one more chance, save me from this road I'm on, Jesus take the wheel."
Wherever we are at on our faith journey, in our pilgrimage to heaven - and I pray we all will make it there safely - Jesus is constantly calling us to lose our lives that we might find them anew, find them truly, find them in Him. It's as simple as letting go of the "wheel" - turning our will over to Jesus, letting Him guide us forward in the decisions we make in our real lives, one moment, one hour, one day at a time, closer to heaven, our true home, and to heavenly experiences here on earth.
It will cost us our control, our will, our plans, our desire. We truly will have to let go, to let Jesus take the wheel. Lose our life, so that we can truly find it. But I can guarantee you it is absolutely worth it. It's a thrill, a wonder, a struggle, but it is the only way to truly live.
Sometimes we think God is too small, as if He doesn't really know what will make us happy, or we know better than Jesus how to live as fully alive human beings. Imagine as best you can, infinite love, a beauty, a wonder, a power so vast it has no beginning or end. This is our God, a community of love greater than which no thing can be thought. And yet God chooses to come to us, He sent Jesus to suffer and die for us, that we might know the power of the Resurrection, the power of a life lost to sin, and found filled with God's grace. Imagine a little two-year old child. She wants to have more dessert. But her parents say she's had enough, it's time for bed now. So she throws a tantrum, she won't let go of it, she won't lose herself. We often act like this child when Jesus invites us to change, or reminds us to live our faith.
And sometimes we try to justify our rebellion. In the first reading, Jeremiah feels God has tricked him, duped him into doing the Lord's will. He felt, as we sometimes feel, that God is toying with us and our happiness. Sometimes following Jesus does take away our happiness in-the-moment, but this is only so that a greater good, abiding and lasting joy can be achieved. Even in the painful and terrible loss of a loved one, of our own health, or in natural disasters like we saw with Hurricane Harvey, we discover true and lasting hope in life by following the Lord's will. Jeremiah at the end of the reading admits this truth. Prophesying had cost him everything, his wife, his job, his standing in society, He tried to stop. But the Word of the Lord burned within him, leading Him through the suffering, through the difficulties, empowering him to make the changes he needed to make, to let control of the wheel, to lose his life, so that He might find it anew.
This is not easy. It will require immense suffering, let me tell you plainly as Jesus told His disciples about the suffering that was to come. But remember what St. Theresa of Avila said, "In light of eternity, the worst sufferings of this life will be seen to be no more serious than a night in a bad motel." And I can tell you from my own experience that it is truly easier to follow Jesus than to live as a half-hearted Christian. Once we get over the hump, come honestly before the Lord, and surround ourselves with good people and fill up on the graces of the Sacraments, truly Jesus' yoke is easy and His burden is light, compared with the pain and emptiness of a secular, purposeless life.
Our lives are 80, 90, or 100 years long at most. But eternity is forever. Following Jesus for 100 years or some number of years less, that will have an end. Our souls live on for eternity. May we use this time well, not waste away our only chance to repent, to truly live, to lose ourselves for love. If our lives are in need of constant distraction, beware that we are not trying to avoid our true feelings, distract attention from our real unhappiness, or maybe even try to avoid our Lord. What we embrace in these fleeting moments of earth will have eternal consequences. This is the path to being truly alive.
Satan will tempt us to take it easy, to not get too religious, to not take the call of discipleship too seriously when it means suffering or a change in our lives actions or morality. And just as Peter had good intentions in saving the Lord from His suffering, good intentions alone will not lead us to heaven. May we say with Jesus, "get behind me, Satan." "Not today, Satan." "I choose to follow Jesus."
We all will struggle, myself included. It's OK to struggle. To struggle with our faith, with one particular aspect of our faith like trust in God, chastity and sexual purity, or being charitable to others with our time and resources. When we struggle, may we make our struggle our prayer, which we say out loud to ourselves, in our hearts, or perhaps write down in a spiritual journal: "Jesus, I want to want to let You in to my real life, but I don't know how to start, help me." And watch how he will! Or we can pray, "Jesus, help me to trust you more, to give you more control, to take more of the wheel of my life." Or how about this one, which we might say midway through our day or through our lives: "Jesus take the wheel again, I gave you permission to lead me in life before, and now you know I want to take the wheel back by force, or maybe jump out of the passenger seat, because I'm scared, so help me, and take the wheel even in my fear."