“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life…will save it” Mark 8:35

How crazy of a statement is that? How do you lose your life by saving it but save your life by losing it? For me, this reading is not necessarily talking about life and death, more so about how I live my life and what I do with my life. The gospel reading also reminds me of the phrase “let go and let God.” I believe that denying ourselves, as the gospel says, or letting go, is about uniting ourselves with God.

But what does this mean? How do we unite ourselves with God? For me, one of the primary ways I unite myself with God is through service. And I find that the best way to truly serve someone is to be at their side and be in solidarity with them. This allows you to really know their needs by knowing their struggles.

When we do unite ourselves with God, there are times when we have two or more paths to choose from. For me, “Losing your life” is about choosing the path that we have discerned to be the right one, even if it means going against what you initially thought, or what people would consider to be “the norm”. This is also how we deny ourselves and sometimes this choice could lead to physical death as well.

But we all unite ourselves with God in a different way. It is through our own reflecting and experiences that we come to find out what we do to come closer to God and to work towards the Kingdom of Heaven.