“Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? — the rhetorical question completes the economic argument: nothing in the world can purchase back a forfeited soul. The irreversibility of the loss is the point. Once the soul is forfeited for the world's gain, there is nothing the world's gain can give back for it. The argument for cross-bearing discipleship is not emotional appeal but the cold logic of ultimate value: the soul is worth more than everything the world can offer.
Church Fathers on Mark 8:37
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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