Everything is a loss

Sometimes we – as individuals and even as a Church – enjoy moments of wonderful success.

Sometimes we – as individuals and even as a Church – experience times when not everything is going well.

Sometimes we can even experience times of devastating loss.

Today’s readings speak powerfully to these experiences.

The Responsorial Psalm (126: 1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6) is the cry of God’s people in a time of loss:

Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
Those that sow in tears
shall reap rejoicing.

But even more powerful and clear are Saint Paul’s words in today’s Epistle (Phillipians 3:8-14):  words that speak of total loss and absolute faith, words about the attitude we should take as individuals, words also that may touch on the attitude  that Pope Francis may have meant when he spoke of us being a “poor Church”

I consider everything as a loss
because of the supreme good
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake
I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ
and be found in him,
not having
any righteousness of my own
based on the law
but that which comes
through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God,
depending on faith
to know him
and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings
by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain
the resurrection from the dead.

It is not
that I have already taken hold of it
or have already attained
perfect maturity,
but I continue my pursuit
in hope that I may possess it,
since I have indeed
been taken possession of
by Christ Jesus.

Brothers and sisters,
I for my part
do not consider myself
to have taken possession.

Just one thing:
forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward
to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit
toward the goal,
the prize
of God’s upward calling,
in Christ Jesus.