Christ the Cornerstone

The essential connection between love and sacrifice

The Scripture readings for the Second Sunday in Lent speak to us about God’s sacrificial love for us. God did not spare his own Son, St. Paul tells us in the second reading (Rom 8:31b-34), but handed him over to the powers of darkness and death for our sake. This echoes the popular verse in St. John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).

This same sacrificial love is what God demanded of Abraham in the first reading (Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18). Even knowing that God relents in the end and spares Isaac from becoming a human sacrifice at the hand of his own father, we still shudder at the thought that God would ask anyone—let alone his most faithful servant—to give up his own son in the most brutal way imaginable. Yet this is exactly what God the Father himself did when he sent his only Son to suffer and die for us.

In our contemporary culture, we tend to forget that there is an essential connection between “love” and “sacrifice.” To really love someone else, we must be prepared to make sacrifices, to give up our own needs and desires for the sake of another.

This is true of the little things in life such as choosing not to go out with friends, which we would really like to do, so that we can spend time at home with our spouse and children. But it’s also true of life’s bigger moments such as the decision to move to another city, which we really do not want to do, because our husband or wife has a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity.

Sacrifice and love go hand in hand. There is no such thing as selfish or

self-centered love in spite of what we are told by our culture. Love means letting go of our own desires for the good of others. It means making sacrifices for the greater good.

This does not mean that lovers are dreary, unhappy people who are always giving in to the whims of others. On the contrary, genuine love is joyous and free.

We might even say that love transfigures us from people who are slaves of our own desires into people who are intimately connected with other people, including family members, friends and neighbors and even strangers or enemies. As many of Jesus’ parables illustrate, there is something truly liberating about sacrificing our own desires for the benefit of others.

The Gospel reading for the Second Sunday in Lent tells the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. As St. Mark says:

“Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on Earth could bleach them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus” (Mk 9:2-4).

The conclusion to this powerful reading helps us to better understand what the Transfiguration means. After God the Father expresses his complete confidence in his beloved Son, and the terrified Apostles are reassured that all will be well, Jesus swears them to secrecy. “As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant” (Mk 9:9-10).

God’s sacrificial love is what has set us free from the bondage of sin and death. Jesus’ acceptance of his mission—to suffer and die for us, to surrender everything for our salvation—confirms that he truly is God’s Son and that we are called to imitate his self-sacrificing love.

Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to the Lord is rewarded by God’s promise:

“I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the Earth shall find blessing—all this because you obeyed my command” (Gn 22:17-18).

And as Abraham proved, the willingness to sacrifice what we love for the greater good, even when we don’t understand it, is all that God asks of us.

Jesus demonstrates by his own words and actions that love, which requires sacrifice, is its own reward. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that we might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). †