"Whosoever will come after Me," our Lord proclaims, "let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." By these words, Christ expresses a seeming paradox, such as we encounter in the saying, "The first shall be last, and the last first." How, then, are we to interpret such profound and apparently contradictory passages? Are we to contemplate our Lord's words as though they are analogous to a Zen koan, like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" God forbid!
The key to understanding such cryptic sayings is, rather, that there are two kingdoms manifest in the realm of this phenomenal, fallen world. On the one hand, there is the Kingdom of God, which is the truly existing, eternal realm of the holy, life-creating Trinity, transcending the created dimensions of time and space. On the other hand, there is the realm of the Kingdom of Self, the realm of the false ego and of those spirits of evil--the fallen angels--who inhabit the aerial sphere surrounding the earth. Within this realm, "your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." To be sure, his days are numbered--and so he is desperate in these final days to deceive and ensnare as many human souls as he can, dragging them down into the dark pit of eternal death and destruction.
Thus, it is essential that the false, self-centered ego--bound by the passions--must be put to death if we truly desire to say with St. Paul, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." That is to say, our corruptible, earthbound self must cease to exist if we hope to enter into that dimension of true and eternal life, that we might become partakers of the divine nature and gods by grace.
Now it is by love alone (because God is love) that we shall be fully united to Him--whether in this life or the next. It is only through receiving this gift of unconditional, self-giving love that we might die with Christ, putting to death the false ego, that the true, God-centered self can emerge, like a butterfly from its chrysalis. But if we are to acquire this pure and perfect love, it is essential that we first lay the foundation of genuine humility, without which it is impossible to cast forth the works of darkness and to enter into the light of God's eternal Kingdom.
As an example of this humility, let us consider the Canaanite woman in today's Gospel. She shamelessly beseeches our Lord's mercy, for her daughter is "grievously vexed with a devil"--most likely as a consequence of her own mother's sinful life and pagan practices. Yet even when our Lord snubs her and insults her, in effect calling her a dog, this woman in nowise objects or takes offence, meekly replying, "Truth, Lord: yet even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table." It is this profound humility that our Lord commends, and that we ourselves should strive to emulate in our own lives.
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