Minute Meditations

We can walk with Jesus, whose mission will be accomplished whether we like it or not, or we can grasp at our fleeting comforts, getting in his way. It doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me. If we want to follow after Jesus, we need to let go of our apathy and laziness, the comfort that comes from being disconnected from others, and begin to truly care. Discipleship is about a life of passion, about giving our lives completely over to the mission that Christ is calling us to. Either we’re fully in, or we’re not in at all.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

While we are quite familiar with being disappointed by the worst we see in the world, we cannot deny the extraordinary heroism of which humanity is also capable. All around us, ordinary people are performing acts of sacrifice, giving up their own lives so that others may live. It is nearly impossible to look into the world and not see love overflowing at every turn. Science cannot explain it; logic doesn’t understand it. And yet, love emanates more powerfully than any substance we can measure. Truth transcends any instrument or equation. In moments of pessimism, when we find ourselves impatient with the world, do not grow hopeless, but trust in the unexplainable love lived by so many. Trust the goodness you see. Be still, and know that God is the source of all that is Good, Beautiful, and True, and that all love exists because God wills it.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

As disciples of Christ, those wishing to follow after him, we are left with a critical question: Do we actually believe that God is truly driving history, that God is completely in control of the coming of the kingdom and all that is good? If so, and since we clearly don’t have the vision ourselves, then it might be time for us to let go of our impatience and needless worries. Being a disciple of Christ does not mean that we get to make the decisions or have power over our situations; it means that we trust that God does and are completely content to let go of all that brings us anxiety.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Think of the Gospel story of Jesus and Lazarus. Jesus treats him exactly the same way that God, the Father, treats Jesus: Jesus is deeply and intimately loved by his Father and yet his Father doesn’t rescue him from humiliation, pain, and death. In his lowest hour, when he is humiliated, suffering, and dying on the cross, Jesus is jeered by the crowd with the challenge: “If God is your father, let him rescue you!” But there’s no rescue. Instead Jesus dies inside the humiliation and pain. God raises him up only after his death. This is one of the key revelations inside the cross: We have a redeeming, not a rescuing, God.

—from the book The Passion and the Cross by Ronald Rolheiser

Sometimes, no matter how hopeful I am about the future and the many changes I want to make in my life, within a few months I find myself back exactly where I was before. For years this frustrated me. Hope inevitably turned to disappointment. I couldn’t understand why, no matter how many times I moved, the same problems kept happening. Then a spiritual director shared an old quip: “Wherever you go, there you are.” As much as we would like to place the blame for our problems on some external factor, the cause of our problems often lies within us. It doesn’t matter where we live, what we do for a living, or who we associate with, we cannot run from ourselves. If we have anger in our hearts, we can run from our past enemies, but we will most certainly find new people with whom to fight. If we struggle with authority, we can change jobs, but we will undoubtedly have new problems at our next one.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Following Christ does not mean that we have to give up our jobs, schools, love of sports and entertainment, playing video games, or our social media handles. At least, not necessarily. What it means is that we need to let go of everything that produces anxiety in us and takes up our time without any benefit to ourselves or the world; it means giving up the trivial worries that merely keep us busy, give us something to think about, offer an escape, or hide us from what really matters. Christ calls us to the here and now. He wants us to be present to people and things that actually make a difference. If we want to be his disciples, there is no time to waste living in a world that doesn’t exist. The kingdom is at hand, and it’s the only world we need.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

At no point in the Gospel does Jesus tell us that if we follow him our lives will be filled with success or that people will like us for it. Quite the contrary, actually! We follow a man who came to share the love of God with the world through healing and forgiveness, but was rejected by the religious elite, betrayed by his closest friends, and murdered as a common criminal. This is not simply Jesus’s fate many years ago, but ours today. “Take up your crosses daily,” he tells us. While there is nothing wrong with hoping for success in our lives, our faith is destined for problems if it becomes an expectation we cannot live without. The road of discipleship is filled with failure; if we demand that our lives be successful, we won’t make it very far.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

How will we react when Jesus chooses to exalt the homeless person downtown, giving him immense wisdom that reveals to us that we actually know very little about life? What will we do when that woman we cannot stand, the one who made our life miserable for so long, is waiting for us next to Jesus, glorified in the kingdom of heaven? Being a disciple of Christ means abandoning our desire to choose who sits next to us at church, who is loved and forgiven, who God chooses to entrust with important tasks, and ultimately, who we spend eternity with. If the mission of Christ is like a dinner party in which we wait to respond to our invitation until we ask, “Who else is going to be there?” we might not be ready to follow him. When we place limits on who can enter and who God can use, we place limits on God and make an idol out of our faith.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM

Jesus does not want masks. He does not want projections of our superficial selves that bear no resemblance to who we really are. When he calls us to follow after him, he does not want the person we wish we were or the person we pretend to be. No, when he calls us, he wants the person he created, the person we are becoming in his love, our truest selves. If we want to follow after him, we must strip ourselves of everything that is superficial, inauthentic, forced, or pretend. We need to let go of all those partial and superficial selves. They just get in the way.

—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship by Casey Cole, OFM