Archbishop Thomas Wenski
preached this homily whereas celebrating Mass Feb. 23, 2023 with the seminarians at St. John Vianney Faculty Seminary in Miami.

“Whoever finds his life
will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will discover it.” This may
sound contradictory, however these are the situations of discipleship. A person known as
to the priesthood provides himself utterly to God’s Church, simply as a husband
in marriage offers himself utterly, holding nothing again from his spouse. A
consecrated girl offers herself in whole devotion as a bride of Christ, simply as
a spouse offers herself unreservedly in matrimony to her husband. All of those
examples are renunciations of the self to like in imitation of Christ.

And these are merely
the traditional excessive requirements of the Gospel that every one among us, by baptism,
is to aspire to. Because the bishops of the Second Vatican Council mentioned in
underlining the common name to holiness of all of the baptized: We are able to solely
notice ourselves as human beings – and develop into the lads or girls that God calls
us to be – solely by the honest present of ourselves. Thus, for the
Christian the best way to true happiness – or to place it in a theological manner – to
beatitude – is discovered not by self-seeking or self-assertion however by
self-giving and self-sacrifice. For the Christian the best way to happiness is love
– which requires us to take up the cross and observe him. Jesus guarantees us
glory – however the highway to glory passes alongside the best way of the Cross, the best way of
self-forgetting love.

That is the type of
love that unites, a love that heals, a love that reconciles. Sin divides, sin
hurts, and sin engenders battle. Oftentimes, once we come throughout battle and
division, we misidentify its causes. Within the Physique of Christ, we’re many members
– and every member is totally different. And once we observe division or battle, we
may suppose that the reason being due to the variations. 

However that’s to misplace
the blame. It’s nearly blasphemous – as a result of it’s as if we’re blaming God,
who created every one among us – together with his or her variations. Within the Church, there
is nice range – of language, of cultures, of races; we’re male and
feminine, we’re wealthy and poor, realized and unlearned. And in God’s plan, this
range will not be meant to divide the Church however to complement the Church – for God
has made us in such a clever manner that there isn’t any one too poor that he doesn’t
have one thing to offer, neither is there anybody so wealthy that he can’t obtain.

The Hebrews left the
slavery of Egypt, crossing the Purple Sea, they wandered 40 years within the desert
earlier than reaching the Promised Land. As we start our Lenten observations, allow us to
remind ourselves that Lent is a name to “Exodus”, to come back out of ourselves, our
self-centered, self-referential issues and select life, “by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding quick to him.”

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