My seminary formator very well told us during our time, which I can never forget, that once a man approaches the Lord or at least attempt to get close to him, utter pain accompanies him, for it is like being skinned and peeled alive. Every time you inch your way towards Jesus, a part of you is being peeled off. That is why after two years after I heard that truth from my formator’s lips, I always feel naked whenever I kneel before the blessed sacrament. Naked because you have nothing more to hide, bare and exposed. Painful because every day you face Him in the chapel it is as if all of your egos, your pretensions, your false securities and your comfort zones are taken all away from you. Everything you hold dear, everything that is attached to you, everything that you use as a shield are gradually being shed-off from your system. You have nothing more to hide. You have exposed your flesh and blood in front of the Lord that everything you say to him now comes true, clear and pure. Painful but very liberating.

But don’t get me wrong, the peeling and skinning doesn’t stop there. Its just the beginning, if you believe me. Like the lettuce, we peel off the rotten layer; like the cabbage, we shed off the withered leaves; and like the grape fruit we skin the surface in order to get through the inside to have the best iof what it can offer. The skinning is not just skin deep. It goes deeper and deeper, peeling every layer, every scabs, every dermis until the core is exposed. Like a wound that needs to be debride in order for oxygen to aid its healing, so as the soul of man needs to be cleansed in order for the grace of God helps to attain its holiness.

Whenever we attempt to get closer to God, the surface must always be peeled. The superficial must always be skinned. That has always been the protocol of the Lord. Painful but liberating. People often mistook this form of purgation as a one time requirement in order to become God’s servant.

Have you seen Winona Ryder’s movie called “Mermaids”? In the film, she plays “Charlotte”, an 18 year old girl who is obsessed with the lives of the Catholic saints, dreaming to be a nun someday and praying and practicing catholic devotions even though she is Jewish by birth and religion. Her flamboyant mother always remind and ridicule her “Charlotte, we are not Catholic, We are Jewish”. Throughout the film, her character struggled to become a devoted catholic, saying the our father and hail Mary many times, reading lives of saints, praying before the image of the Virgin Mary and always practicing mortification and simplicity. Yet with all her efforts to stay chaste, she still fell into sin and committed fornication at a bell tower of a convent with a young man. Simply speaking, she gave her virginity on the very same convent where purity is held in high esteem. Moral of the story? Everything Charlotte did to become Catholic were all Superficial.

To get closer with God, you don’t need to pretend. You just have to peel away everything that covers you. You come forward to his presence as is, bare and nothing all over. practically naked.

Today’s Gospel tells everything what it means to become a good disciple “hate your Mother and Father, hate your friends, your brothers and sisters or even your own life. Carry your cross, and renounce all your possession”.. of course Jesus was speaking metaphorically, a little deeper than being literal. For if we actually took this in the literal, all of us could either end up as anti-socials or suicidals.

These just means that we have to detach ourselves from everything that weigh us down to the ground, Peel off the superficial skins and follow him with no ifs and no buts. With no people to istop us in following and serving him. No possession that can hinder us in giving what is due to others. No Narcissistic desires that can prevent us to offer our own lives so that others may live. These are just the surface of what the Lord wants to peel from our skins.

It is as if he is telling us, “this is just the beginning”.

But we eagerly decline, “Lord I quit”

but the Lord replies “WAIT, THERES MORE!”….

Actually, Mark has a continuation of what Jesus forgot to mention in Luke’s Gospel…

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel 9 will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? – Mark 8:35-36

You see, today’s Gospel is simply about detachment. Not so much in hating your parents or living in an island alone. Or attempting suicide or going for the World record of Carrying the heaviest Cross.

Detachment is the actual skinning. It is the first step in being naked. Removing the unnecessary and the superficial. Undressing your clothes until you wake up one day that you have nothing more left on your body except you and you alone, warts and all. Bare and naked. In front of the Lord… I tell you, its painful but its very liberating

Francis of Assisi have already done this. We all know of course that he took this very literal. He gave all his father’s expensive textile and garments to the poor to the dismay of Pietro Bernardone, his materialistic father. He even went further of stripping himself naked in the Piazza, in front of the towns people and of Assisi’s Bishop Guido. And the most dramatic of all (drum roll please…), he capped the scene with a killer dialogue that never fails to kindle one’s vocation.

“I am not your son anymore. What is born of the flesh, is flesh. What is born of the spirit, is spirit. My father will be God the Father. I am now reborn. Father I give you back everything that belongs to you. Your clothes. Your Possessions. Your name too.”

But even though, Francis took the skinning and peeling literally, he never stopped on the surface. He went deeper and deeper in stripping himself of everything. Pain after pain. layer after layer, skin after skin. He removed everything that is not necessary, superficial and wanting. Until he has nothing more to skin and peel. He left himself bare and naked. Fact is, Francis died embracing the ground, embracing lady poverty, with nothing with him, but himself.

That is why the Gospel reminds us, that if ever we want to follow Jesus, become his disciple, we need to be detached, bare, skinned and naked.

When I went in the formation, I also did what Francis did, of course in a totally different degree and in an absolutely different context and interpretation. I left my family without looking back. Actually I left everyone who loved me in sorrow and in tears. Not once did I look back. But God has other plans. I might be ready at that time, but not the people around me. So when I voluntarily went out of the formation, I thought the skinning would stop there.

I was wrong.

Until now, where ever I go, whatever I do, the Lord keeps on skinning me alive. Layer by layer, skin after skin. It’s painful, I know. But its liberating.

Until we are Skinned and Naked, expect that we cannot be his disciple, carry his cross and follow him.

And if now, you feel you are being skinned alive, be thankful. This is just the beginning…