Take Up Your Cross
So often, those of us engaged in justice work consider ourselves the “good guys.” It’s those “other” people, we think, who are the problem: the ones who don’t acknowledge racism or climate change; the ones who want to stop immigrants from making a home here. We argue that it’s “they” who are holding back a better world. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus isn’t talking about those “other” people. He’s calling us to examine ourselves—to practice self-denial, take up our cross, and even lose our life.
This means no one is off the hook, even those working for peace and justice. For all our enlightened rhetoric, for all our earnest activism, are we willing to deny ourselves in order to bring about a more just world? Or are we only interested in the work as long as it doesn’t require too much of us or create too big an inconvenience?