“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it — the paradox of discipleship: the natural human instinct (preserve your life) leads to the loss of what makes life meaningful; the counter-instinctive path (losing your life for Jesus and the gospel) leads to its genuine preservation. The for me and for the gospel connects personal loyalty to Jesus with the proclamation of the kingdom — you cannot lose your life for one without the other.
Church Fathers on Mark 8:35
After shewing to His disciples the mystery of His passion and resurrection, He exorts them, as well as the multitude, to follow the example of His passion.
For a man who denies another, be it brother or father, does not sympathize with him, nor grieve at his fate, though he be wounded and die; thus we ought to despise our body, so that if it should be wounded or hurt in any way, we should not mind its suffering.
Or else, as a skilful pilot, foreseeing a storm in a calm, wishes his sailors to be prepared; so also the Lord says, 'If any one will follow me, &c.'
Read all 12 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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