“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." - Matthew

One of the super  powers of Jesuit education is helping students  find themselves by offering them  opportunities to discover their passions through touching other lives.  It’s almost impossible to escape Creighton and other Jesuit schools without getting involved in service.

In theory this should seem sacrificial. But the opposite is true. My students saw  service trips and other volunteer work as a high point of college. They experienced what Matthew tells us in today’s gospel.“ For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

I knew we had accomplished our goal whenever alums sought career advice because they found that jobs that merely paid well but contributed little to improve society did not satisfy their souls. “Creighton ruined me for life,” one alum jokingly complained.   “What’s the point in selling expensive stuff to rich people who don’t need it?” said another. YESS!

My students helped me understand what Jesus meant when he told us to lose our lives for his sake in order to find them.  It was so much simpler than the gory stories of martyrdom that I read about as a kid in a Catholic school. Jesus wants us to find joy and fulfillment in life. There’s no better way to do it than to follow the advice of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a Protestant medical missionary, who said “Those who will be happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

It’s fine to make a lot of money but not if that’s your major priority in life.  Do you answer calls to serve? I live a couple of blocks from Poppleton Street, a name that meant nothing to me until I learned that Andrew Poppleton had been Omaha’s most prominent attorney in the 1870’s when he represented Chief Standing Bear pro bono in a famous case that decided for the first time that Indians were people in the eyes of the law. I assume Poppleton made money on his other cases. But he answered a call to serve when it counted and I am reminded   to emulate his example daily when I drive on his street. This is something we can all do.
Or there’s a question of how to use our money to make the world a better place. Ideally this means advocacy as well as writing checks (okay, donating online). I think of covering a group of rich women who made their gifts to United Way contingent on the creation of a domestic violence shelter. They used their money to make a statement, and we can too.

St. Mother Teresa used to say that the poverty of the affluent nations was loneliness. I know people, especially retirees, who tell me how hard it is to make friends at our age. Then I think of the new friends I’ve made at church, and working with refugees and Habitat for Humanity. We find out lives at every stage in life by “losing” them as Jesus taught us.

I’m glad that I helped “ruin” so many former students who are now gaining the only kind of “wealth” that matters long term.