Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
The Cross We’d Rather Not Carry
Which cross is the hardest to carry? Well, it’s not the one we see “out there” in our broken world, but the one that runs right through our own hearts.
What do I mean by this?
Well, we live in times when it’s easy to see demons everywhere except where they do their most dangerous work. We scan the headlines, analyze the culture, debate the politics, and point to all the ways our society has lost its way. And we’re not wrong—there is real darkness in our world. But while we’re busy identifying evil “out there,” the most insidious spiritual battle is happening in the place we least want to look: within ourselves.
The desert fathers knew something we’ve forgotten. St. Anthony the Great taught that demons attack us not primarily through external systems or cultural forces, but through our own passions—our anger, our pride, our envy, our despair. Every time we give in to these passions, we’re experiencing demonic influence in its most direct and personal form.
But here’s what’s spiritually dangerous about always looking outward for the enemy: it allows us to see ourselves as the righteous ones fighting evil somewhere else. It lets us off the hook from the much harder work of confronting our own sinfulness. It can even become a form of spiritual pride—and pride, as we know, is the root of all sin.
The Narrow Way Leads Inward
When Jesus calls us to take up our cross, He’s not primarily calling us to fight cultural battles or identify demonic influences in technology or politics. He’s calling us to the much more difficult task of denying ourselves—of recognizing that the line between good and evil runs right through our own hearts.
The cross we must take up is the cross of self-examination. It’s the cross of admitting that we, too, are broken. It’s the cross of recognizing our own capacity for anger, judgment, pride, anxiety, and fear. It’s the cross of taking responsibility for our own spiritual healing rather than diagnosing everyone else’s sickness.
This is why our Lord said we must first take the log out of our own eye before we can see clearly to help our brother with the speck in his. Not because the speck isn’t there—it might be—but because we can’t truly help anyone else until we’ve honestly faced our own need for healing.
True Spiritual Warfare
The real spiritual warfare isn’t about identifying evil in systems or institutions. The real battle happens every time we feel anger rising and choose to pause for prayer instead of lashing out. It happens when pride whispers that we’re more righteous than others, and we humble ourselves instead. It happens when anxiety grips us, and we turn to Christ rather than to worry and control.
Every moment of repentance is an act of spiritual warfare. Every time we forgive instead of holding a grudge, we’re casting out demons. Every time we choose humility over self-righteousness, we’re taking up our cross.
The demons our ancestors in the faith warned us about? They’re not primarily working through the latest technology or political movement. They’re working through that flash of anger you felt this morning when someone cut you off in traffic. They’re working through the pride that rose up when someone questioned your judgment. They’re working through the way you might judge others while excusing your own failings.
The Kingdom Within
Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. But so often we’re looking for it everywhere except where He said it could be found. We want to build God’s Kingdom by fixing everything “out there,” but the Kingdom begins with allowing Christ to heal what’s broken “in here”—in our own hearts.
This doesn’t mean we ignore the real problems in our world. It means we approach them from a place of humility rather than judgment, from healing rather than superiority, from love rather than anger. We can’t give what we don’t have. We can’t heal others if we haven’t allowed Christ to heal us.
As we take up our cross together as a parish family, let’s remember that our primary calling isn’t to be culture warriors or demon-hunters scanning the horizon for threats. Our calling is much more challenging and much more transformative: to be saints in the making, allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal and heal the brokenness within our own hearts.
The Cross That Heals
The beautiful truth is that when we take up this cross—the cross of honest self-examination and repentance—we don’t carry it alone. Christ carries it with us. And as He transforms our hearts, we become channels of His healing love to a world that desperately needs it.
This is how we truly serve our community. Not by pointing out all the ways they are wrong, but by becoming living examples of what it looks like when broken people allow Christ to heal them. This is how we become a light to the Northland—not by our righteous anger at the darkness, but by allowing Christ’s light to shine through our own humble, healed hearts.
The cross we’re called to carry together isn’t the burden of fixing everyone else. It’s the joyful burden of allowing Christ to fix us. And when we do that—when we truly take up this cross—we discover that losing our lives for Christ’s sake is actually the way we find them.
Let us pray that God would grant us the courage to look within, the grace to see ourselves as we truly are, and the mercy to allow Christ to transform us from the inside out. This is the cross that heals. This is the discipleship that changes the world.
Amen.