More than being just a moral teacher or guide, Jesus came to establish a complete transformation of what it means to be human and to live a fully human life.

When St Paul proclaims that we are now “dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus,” he highlights how Jesus’ submission to and defeat of death has changed the whole human situation. Jesus was the perfect and obedient representative of all humanity.

Through our faith that he is who he says he is, the eternal communion with the Father that belongs by nature to Jesus as the incarnate Son belongs to us through participation in him.

As St Paul explains, “When we were baptised, we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.” This new life in Christ is one in which sin and death no longer have dominion in the human experience. Paul exhorts us: “You too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin and alive for God in Christ Jesus.”

In his instructions to the Twelve in this week’s gospel, Jesus teaches, “Anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” Part of ‘losing our lives’ for Jesus means extending the self-giving, compassionate and merciful love we have received from him to others, especially the poor.

And ‘losing our lives’ can mean suffering.  As Christians, we must be prepared to accept suffering, not out of a masochistic sense that suffering is good or that we deserve it, but as a response made in love to give up anything and everything that impedes or undermines the life and love to which Christ calls us.

As Jesus teaches in this week’s gospel, this can sometimes mean prioritising him and the demands of discipleship over the demands of family. Consider St Francis of Assisi as an example. St Francis, in defiance of his enraged father, left his affluent home and the life his family had planned for him to live a life of radical poverty, humility, and dedication to serving the poor, in imitation of the life, poverty, and love of Jesus. St Francis is renowned as Il Poverello (Italian for “the little poor man” or “the little poor one”), and as a “little Christ.”

‘Losing our lives’ for Jesus does not necessarily mean we will be called to Jesus’ level of self-sacrifice or that of the Christian martyrs. Still, our hearts need to be oriented towards this calling and open to its demands, painful and costly though that may sometimes be. But Jesus is very clear in calling us – indeed challenging us – to live the life of freedom and self-giving love for which we were created.

Challenging and demanding though it is, each and every one of us is called to be a “little Christ.”

 Joseph Doyle

© Majellan Media 2026

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