“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? — the economic logic applied to ultimate currency: the world as the measure of maximum gain against the soul as the measure of ultimate value. Gaining the whole world sounds like ultimate success; forfeiting the soul is ultimate loss. The exchange — everything in the world for the loss of oneself — is the worst trade imaginable. The soul (psychē) is the life, the person, the self — everything that gives the gaining of the world any meaning.
Church Fathers on Mark 8:36
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
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
Publish a reflection on this verse
No reflections on this verse yet. Be the first to write one!