Fear to Renounce
Renounce the world [deny yourself], pick up your cross,
and follow me.
Life and fears
I find myself at this point
in my journey with God. I love and worship Him through
my actions and prayer; and I prepare myself for any
expansion of our relationship that He may initiate,
through my prayer-life.
Again and again I have come across Jesus making
statements similar to this one, “Renounce the world,
pick up your cross, and follow me.” I have run away
from this since I first heard it.
I have stopped running and I am ready to face it.
Jesus has expresses this call many times, in many
situations throughout the Testaments. It was a
frightful demand to a young Catholic boy in the Bronx of
the 1950s, and it is no less awful to this father and
husband fifty years later.
But now, as I travel my journey, eyes more open and far
more willing, this sign stands before me demanding my
attention; “renounce,” it whispers within me.
The questions born of a rising anguish: “What of my
wife, my children – some still young, my bills and
house…”
“renounce”
…The world? Myself?
But I am to glorify you, Lord, in your wondrous
creations, am I not? The earth and heavens: in the
beauty of dawn, the majestic trees, the sweeping rivers
and rolling mountains – this work that you were so
pleased with. The humans: beautiful, ingenious, crafty
and skilled; emotional and analytical, loving and
lovable. I understood that I am to worship you and
praise you for your glorious work.
Am I now to renounce it?
Driving the roads north along the eastern bank of the
Hudson River then crossing it at Bear Mountain and
driving along its western edge, and up and over the
Storm King Mountain, I’m traveling to visit a friend.
Here in the Hudson River Valley there is magnificent
beauty no matter which direction you gaze. The
mountains actually do have a rolling look to them, and
then there are those which the glaciers of ages past
have carved into the Palisades, still bare in contrast
to the others decked in Green or, on a cold January day
like this one, the gray of sleeping trees and scrub.
For thirty miles the road winds around and over the
mountains, as the river winds at their feet. Glorious,
beautiful, majestic, and all the work of the Lord.
To get from one beautiful place in this river valley to
another I get into my car and drive. The car is like an
extension of me, I can marvel at God’s creation while
this computer-like brain of mine takes care of the
driving.
And I think of how God blew the breath of life [Gen
2:7] into the clay He’d molded to animate Adam, or
to put Adam’s soul into the body of clay – God’s breath
of life, our spirit.
My soul is my spirit; within me – the real me – using my
body as I am using my car.
Ha. My body as an extension
of me the spirit.
In the 60s someone would be mumbling, “heavy,”
right now.
It is pretty easy for me to spend a life
misunderstanding this concept. I am Joe, all I have to
do is look in the mirror. Yeah. That’s me. There’s a
little too much of me, but I love to eat; I should
control it, and I mean to, but...
I remember that Adam and Eve got to love the world so
much that they wanted more [Gen 3]. The
forbidden fruit: the knowledge of the world – not
scientific knowledge but carnal knowledge, I’m
thinking. Sure, God had told them to go forth and
multiply. (I’m assuming He wasn’t talking about math.)
Yet, once they had the knowledge they became ashamed of
their bodies, and hid, for their shame. They sinned for
wanting the world too much, for loving the world more
than its Creator.
On thinking further, I recalled that God got angry and
destroyed all but Noah and his family (and an assortment
of animals) because all those other people were
captivated by the physical world. [Gen 6-9]
Then later Abraham negotiated with God so as not to have
everyone in Sodom destroyed.
God saved
only Lot and his daughters, who later proved as carnal
as those in Sodom. [Gen 18-19]
I sin when I look at all of God’s wonderful creations
and am captured by them, instead of praising God, who,
by definition, must be far more awesome than His
creations.
But I don’t see God. These eyes, these complex
instruments that God conceived of and created from the
very earth he willed into being, they do not see God,
but they see all that is of the world in all its beauty,
and it is all so desirable.
Yet, I should say, Thank you Lord for this wondrous
world and all these great people. I love you, Lord; in
all the love I have for Your creations I am loving You.
In all I desire in this world, I desire you more, You,
the Creator of all. How awesome You are. In
fact, I was created to do just that.
But it is so hard to get
more of God, and I have so much to do, work and then
there’s so much around to do and see; and I need to
kick-back and see that next episode…
Of human desire God said, “…the desires of men’s
hearts are evil from the start.” [Gen 8:21] That
heart is like the computer in my car, which is consumed
by its all demanding world, which is the car. Am I so
small a being that I am like a car’s computer, which
lives for its job and surroundings that I have turned
away from my true self? Could I, could all of us, have
renounced God for the world?
The greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord,
your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first
commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” (Jesus,: Matt 22:34-40) I
must love God, and love my neighbor as myself, but what
am I calling my-self? My house, my car, my body of
clay? Is this the self I am called to deny, to
renounce?
Renounce the world [deny
yourself], pick up your cross, and follow me.
Is Christ saying to me – the real me, that which was
made in His image: my soul, me as spirit? “Renounce the
world pick up your cross, and follow me.”
Is my cross, or at least part of it, my humanity – that
which the Creator formed from the clay to make Adam, the
clay which hears the call of earthly desires?
I hear Him saying, “Joseph the spirit, made in My image,
grab hold of your humanity, take complete control over
it: deny it, and follow me through your human life and
on into Eternity. I give you my Grace to do this,
however, you must will it; make the decision and I will
help you. All will be well. Trust Me.”
Simplicity from an
impeccable source, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
“Total surrender to God must come in small details as it
comes in big details. It is nothing but that single
word, ‘Yes, I accept whatever you give, and I give
whatever you take.’ And this is just a simple way for
us to be holy. We must not create difficulties in our
own minds. To be holy does not mean to do extraordinary
things, to understand big things, but it is a simple
acceptance, because I have given myself to God, because
I belong to him – my total surrender. He could put me
here. He could put me there. He can use me. He can
not use me. It doesn’t matter because I belong so
totally to him that he can do just what he wants to do
with me.”
Yes.
Saint Francis de Sales said it this way: “Yes, Heavenly
Father, I accept everything. Yes, and always yes.”
Joseph De Matteo, January 2008
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