Some 30 years ago I set out on a new path of life.  I received in my heart an invitation to become a priest of Jesus Christ and to be a steward or servant of the mysteries of divine and eternal life.  This call entailed a new and radical life of discipleship to our Lord Jesus.  I accepted this invitation and set out on this new way of life that is Christ.  I had no idea where this road of new life would lead me or what would be asked of me.

     When I first received this invitation and began considering it, I understood that I would have to make some adjustments in my life.  I had the intuition that I would have to “make room” in my life for the new responsibilities that I would assume as a priest.  There would be some changes in my life.  However, I thought then that I would still be the person that I was when I first started on this journey of formation.

     At the time that I first began discerning my call to the priesthood I felt that I already had a mature and well-formed, healthy, developed “self” image.  I had been successful in the things that I had undertaken and I had studied my “self” in the process of receiving my Master’s degree in psychology.  I had studied self-realization, I was self possessed, I was self aware, I was self determined and in many ways I was self absorbed.  I was comfortable with my self and I felt good about my self.  I felt that I had something valuable to offer to Jesus and to the Church in giving my self to this new vocation of priesthood. 

     Jesus accepted my offer but he had something new in mind.  If I was to follow him more freely and fully I must let go of the “self” that I had fashioned and I must accept a totally new way of life and fullness.  As Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis points out, “I must lose my self to him in order that he may unite it with his own as he lays down his life that the world may have abundant life.  He is asking me to do only what he has himself already done.”  “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 10,39) 

     “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”  (Mt. 10,38)  To serve Christ I must be willing to take up the cross in my own life, empty myself, and sacrifice one life to receive another.  As St. Paul says, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” (Rom 6,8)  The road of radical discipleship called for me to let go of all prior ways of understanding my “self”, including all family relationships.  “And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”” (Mt. 12,49f)  To be worthy of discipleship in Christ I must be fully united to Christ in offering my self in a sacrifice of love that is represented by the cross.  My life re-presents the cross in dying to self in order to live for Christ.

     The life of priesthood and discipleship is meant to glorify God in Christ and never to glorify my self.  As St. Peter puts it, “Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins.  Be hospitable to one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.  Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God; whoever serves, let it be with the strength that God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever.  Amen.” (1Pt 4,8-11)  Now I live a new life to the greater glory of God.  To take up my cross did not mean merely enduring some difficult situations in life but truly means to be “crucified with Christ”, to sacrifice the old “self” for a new identification with Christ Jesus, the true High Priest.  Living a life of radical discipleship in the priesthood of Christ has certainly meant more than simply “making room” for Jesus in my life.  It is a totally new life.  In becoming a priest I had to surrender everything in my life but it has all been given back to me a hundred-fold by the grace and gift of a new life in Christ.  Now my life is a constant “laying down” my life and “taking up” my cross, that I might walk with him, suffer with him, sacrifice with him, die with him and be hidden with him, giving my life as an oblation of love, that I might be raised to new life and receive a new life in Christ, an eternal life of joy.