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He summoned the crowd with His disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”

For seven Sundays we journeyed with Jesus and His apostles coming to understand that we receive Him. For the rest of Ordinary Time and the special Solemnities of our Church, Jesus discusses applying our life in Him. How do we do it?

Jesus again lays it on the line for His followers. He tells them that they must take up their cross and follow Him.

We kind of miss the point based on our religious-cultural experience of Jesus and Christianity. We can watch movies and see Jesus carrying His cross. Certainly, He saved us by that, but what is Jesus asking of me today?

We obviously, unless we are being tortured for our faith as is done in some places, will never experience seeing, touching, or picking up a cross. We may have a symbolic one in our bedrooms or the entryway to our house, we may see large ones in churches, and during Holy Week we may adore the Cross as an expression of our love for what Jesus did for us. Yet the idea of taking up a cross is distant and foreign to us.

What is Jesus trying to tell me?

Let’s place ourselves amid the crowd Jesus was speaking to. They knew what a cross was, what it meant, what it felt like, and what it resulted in. They may have had family members arrested by Roman soldiers and subsequently killed on a cross. Their system of torture and execution was placed where all could see and experience it. Even when a person had died, the cross was left there awaiting its next victim.

To the people in the crowd this was the worst thing they could possibly experience. It was the most tortuous, most awful experience. Yet, Jesus tells them to take up this thing a person would not even wish on their worst enemy. 

Jesus is telling the crowd and us that discipleship is more than an occasional bit of harder-than-usual work. It is more than what we think we can do. It is an all-in complete self-giving in following Him. As His disciple, I must go all-in, giving of my whole self. Taking up that level of dedication comes with the most awesome of promises.

We people, named after Christ Jesus, yes, Christians, having given our all all-the-time will come before the Father one day and Jesus will tell Him that we are His friends. He will welcome us and lead us into that eternal place of life, homecoming, and eternal joy.