31 March 2015 - traitors and trailblazers

“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.

We're at a loss. We don't understand our own weakness and we don't understand what following you really means. We say things like:

“Master, why can I not follow you now? 
I will lay down my life for you.”

But we say this more out of self-image than self-giving. We want to appear a certain way. We want the image of one who will go with you to the cross. We would prefer to be seen as people who would never betray you.

To follow you is to the way that only love can go. This is why, right after you tell us that we cannot follow you now, you say:

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is the secret to enduring the shame of the cross where all of our self-image and false pretense is shattered. The secret is love! And so you tell us:

“Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,
though you will follow later.”

We are weak. We deny you. We betray you. We run from the way of the cross. But you endure the shame for the joy set before you(cf. Heb. 12:2), the joy of saving us and glorifying your Father. The joy set before us is to love one another and to glorify God. It is to lay our lives down in love. Man "cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself" (Gaudium et Spes 24).

Only you can make us realize this, LORD. Only you can change our hearts to love so completely that we can follow you. They say love is its own reward. But you are the only one who can make this true enough in our own lives that we can endure the cross for you and our neighbor.

You blaze this trail first when you give your life to glorify your Father and save us all. It appears to be toil in vain. It appears that you are uselessly spending your strength. You reveal that it is not useless or vain. We see that the joy set before you is a real thing. It is a physical force. It is the power of the resurrection. You recompense is with God. He shows his glory through you. You blaze this trail so that we may follow.

It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

We cannot follow at first, because you must blaze the trail. But you assure us that we will follow. We will go the way which only love can go. You make it possible for us.

For you are my hope, O Lord;
my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength.