“Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.”

Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. – St. Therese of Lisieux: (1873 – 1897: was a Roman Catholic French Discalced Carmelite nun widely venerated in modern times.)

Gospel Text: (MK 10:28-31)

Peter began to say to Jesus,

'We have given up everything and followed you."

Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you,

there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters

or mother or father or children or lands

for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel

who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:

houses and brothers and sisters

and mothers and children and lands,

with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.

But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first."

Is there some regret in Peter’s heart as he lays bare the sacrifice he’s made to follow Jesus? Jesus explains that both in this world and the next, a disciple’s sacrifice bears fruit. In “this present age”, material sacrifices are compensated by the superabundance shared in by the church, the assembly of disciples gathered with Jesus. All the more, “in the age to come”, eternal life with Jesus is the consequence of following Him. Jesus’ logic lays bare what St. Francis of Assisi expressed in his canticle: “It is in giving that we receive, and in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

Jesus gives us a brief saying to sum up the logic of discipleship. “Many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”