PRIVATE IDOLS
There’s something that ends up scandalous and unbearable for someone who comes close to Jesus from a climate of self-sufficiency lived out in modern society. Jesus is radical when it comes time to ask for a connection to his person. His disciples must subordinate everything to follow him unconditionally.
It’s not about an «evangelical counsel» for a select group of Christians or an elite of energetic followers. It’s an indispensable condition for every disciple. Jesus’ words are clear and resounding. «Whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple».
We all feel the desire for liberty in the depth of our being. And yet there’s an experience that keeps coming up generation after generation: the human being seems condemned to be «a slave of idols». Uncapable of being satisfied with ourselves, we go through life looking for something that responds to our most fundamental aspirations and desires.
Each one of us seeks a «god» in order to live, something that we unconsciously convert into what’s essential for our life: something that dominates us and takes over us. We seek to be free and autonomous, but it seems we can’t live without giving ourselves to some «idol» that determines our whole life.
These idols are very diverse: money, success, power, prestige, sex, tranquility, happiness at all cost… Each one knows the name of her «private idol», to which she secretly surrenders her being. That’s why, when we do something in a gesture of «naïve liberty» because «we feel like it», we must ask ourselves what is it that dominates us at that moment and whom we are really obeying.
Jesus’ invitation is provocative. There’s only one path to grow in liberty, and only they know it who dare to unconditionally follow Jesus, working with him in the Father’s project: constructing a more just and dignified world for everyone.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
