Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

The dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the liberation of Eastern European states from its control brought great joy and relief to many people. Great empires, their leaders and their values are most often opposite to the approach of Jesus. While the great empires may be able to make the trains run on time, they bring no one genuine happiness. Even their leaders realize little from gaining the whole world by force; in the process they destroy themselves.

Neither you or I, of course, is going to offer much competition to Alexander the Great, Napoleon or Stalin but on our own level we are at times persuaded that power-plays, ingenious strategies, cunning and self-seeking are the obvious ways to happiness and fulfillment.

Jesus teaches a paradox which sounds like nonsense to the world of politics and power seeking. “If you lose your life for my sake you will find it” (Matthew 16:25). By surrendering to the power and life of God in us we attain, better yet, are given fulfillment that we could never have devised. Salvation, fulfillment is, in the Bible and Christian tradition, not something we attain from a series of seminars or some guru. It is a gift of God to those who surrender, open themselves in poverty of spirit to allow God to work in them. “If you lose your life you will find it.”

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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