Jesus said, "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."  Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?

Once again, when all our thoughts turn to Jesus and the sufferings he is about to endure he warns us about our own cup of suffering that must daily be ours.  This is something of a foreshadowing of Luke 23.28: "Do not weep for me but for yourselves."

To be a Christian implies, before anything else, that we reject what we instinctively see as ours by right as members of the world.  The opposite of self-denial is the avoidance of suffering at all costs and the exaltation of Self.  If we want to follow Christ - and it is our choice as Jesus clearly says - we must be willing to accept suffering and, perhaps the hardest thing of all - the sacrifice of our own indomitable will.

If we obey the commands of God and follow the Gospel of Christ we will suffer and we will lose ourselves.  Suffering is not something that we need to seek out, in fact in doing so we have a sure sign that we are still our own masters.  And too, self-denial is not our goal, it will come quite naturally through obedience to God.

Those who seek suffering and seek self-denial are like those Jesus warned about in Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18, those who pray, fast and give alms so that others may see.  In this case suffering and self-denial are done for the self to see.  The outcome is the same however: we already have our reward.  Ours is an intimate God and His desire is intimate union with us.  In seeking that union daily through obedience, suffering and self-denial are natural side-effects which we must never fear.  How can we fear the cross when it is only through climbing on to it that we can gain as near a union with Christ as possible in this life, and from its unique vantage point, gaze into paradise?