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Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
Retreat and Conference Center
November 16, 2018
VICTOR FRANKL ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ø Jesus in today’s Gospel advises us not to live on the surface of life
Ø He says: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it”
Ø Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and a Jew, says much the same thing as Jesus but in different words
Ø Frankl’s thinking was influenced by time he spent in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz
Ø They help us to appreciate J’ words all the more
Ø “I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system
Ø Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself
Ø The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself
Ø In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice
Ø In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end”
AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS ++++++++++++++++++++++
Ø We would say a bit differently
Ø We would say that being human and being like Christ always points us beyond self, to God and to others
Ø We would say that by giving ourselves to God and to others we come to the fullness of what God made us to be, the fullness of life
Ø We would say that it is God who ultimately empowers us to do this
CONCLUSION ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ø But with those Christian and Catholic understandings and nuances, Victor Frankl’s words are very insightful
Ø He helps us to appreciate in a new and different way what Jesus says here: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it”
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