Self-denial and bearing one’s cross is central to Christian discipleship. It means surrendering one’s desires and ambition to follow the path that Jesus sets before us. In a world that often promotes selffulfillment and personal gain, Jesus’ words challenge us not to seek our own glory or comfort, but to embrace sacrifice and service. It involves trusting in God’s plan, even when it leads us to suffering and hardship.

Jesus has shown the way: he divested himself of glory as God’s Son, humbled himself, and suffered death on the cross. By his obedience and sacrificial love, he was highly exalted by God and became a means of expiation for our sins. In losing one’s life, one finds it. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl shows how this paradox allowed one to endure the hardships of the holocaust. He observed that among his fellow inmates who survived the concentration camp were those who were able to connect with a sense of purpose in life, because they imagined that some beloved one waited for them outside the prison.

Love is the force that allows one to endure sufferings and make heroic sacrifices. Frankl developed the theory of logotheraphy, of finding purpose for life—the care for a loved one, the fulfillment of a mission, and facing suffering with dignity. In the same vein, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once famously said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” He who has a reason to live can endure almost any suffering.

See, upon the mountains there advances the bearer of good news, announcing peace! Celebrate your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows! For nevermore shall you be invaded by the scoundrel; he is completely destroyed.

The Lord will restore the vine of Jacob, the pride of Israel, though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined the tendrils. Woe to the bloody city, all lies, full of plunder, whose looting never stops! The crack of the whip, the rumbling sounds of wheels; horses a-gallop, chariots bounding, cavalry charging, the flame of the sword, the flash of the spear, the many slain, the heaping corpses, the endless bodies to stumble upon! I will cast filth upon you, disgrace you and put you to shame; till everyone who sees you runs from you, saying, “Nineveh is destroyed; who can pity her? Where can one find any to console her?”

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?

“Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct. Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”