Scripture:
Reflection:
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. -Matthew 10:37-39
Me, me, me! Who is the “me” in the passage from our Gospel reading today, and what is this cross that he challenges me with today? The easy answer is Jesus and his cross on Calvary. The not-so-easy answer is what Jesus is trying to tell me today, March 7, 2025.
I was a 24-year-old student-teacher in an inner city Chicago Public School. The year was 1968. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, and this was the following September. This was not the world where I grew up. This school did not resemble any school I had attended in all my 18 years of attending school. This was a school where I never met the principal. He never came out of his office. A school where, as a student teacher, I could not go into the cafeteria because of all the plates being thrown in fights among the students. This was a school where I hardly remember a class that didn’t involve leaving the classroom with thirty students, usually going down three or four flights of stairs because someone had pulled the fire alarm and then returning after an all-clear with less than half the class I started with. A school where many of the students in my assigned classes couldn’t read or understand English—a school where my car, albeit a real junker, was stolen twice.
This experience led me to leave teaching and search for a different career. I did find one that sidetracked me for the next year and a half, but I eventually ended up back facing that strange world of the inner-city school of the ’70s. I also found the me that was afraid of people who experienced life differently.
I believe this Jesus is a person who is comfortable with people who come from very different backgrounds. He doesn’t run from the stranger or the strange world from which they come. He embraces them and this embrace is the cross that leads to resurrection. It is the cross of openness to the other, and the willingness to travel together this road of new life. God, help me take up my cross that you gift me with today and hope in the new life you promise.
Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.