"Whoever finds his life..."

Thanks to my wife for calling my attention to this stunning interview.

Near the end of the interview Reiko Rizzuto reflects on what would have happened if she had returned to her family. She would have done "that thing that I didn't want to do, which was give up my life...for someone else."

What is on display in Miss Rizzuto's interview is a heinous kind of narcissism which is able to justify the abandonment of one's spouse and children and call it "good." It is a corrosive morality that seeks the highest good in serving self at the expense of those who need us most.

But I must confess that the same depravity that Miss Rizzuto wears so proudly lurks in the recesses of my own heart. The same impulse to live entirely for self is a siren's song with which I am well acquainted. Indeed, what, in the end, could provide any of us with sufficient motive to lay down our lives for anyone else?

Only a suffering Savior, a King who takes up a cross, a Lord who lays down his life can give us sufficient cause to give up ourselves for the good of another. Only the cross makes sense of Jesus words: "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matt 10:39).