The Way of Ups and Downs

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, April 6th, 2025:
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Philippians
​3.8-14

Brothers and sisters: I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Is the Way of Ups and Downs familiar to you? While this may be more of a reality for people of a particular temperament or for women physically when every month includes literal biochemical highs and lows, I also think it’s a universal human reality: life is full of ups and downs. 

I remember as a kid listening with my family to a comical Christian speaker reflecting on Jesus’ words, “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.” The speaker said he’d sometimes thought of these words as a promise of peace and spiritual harvest but, the older he got, the more he realized that life is full of ups and downs. (He surfed his arm up and down in the air like it was on a roller coaster). He went on: when Jesus says He’s come that we may have life “more abundantly” (and here his rollercoaster arm shaped highs twice as high and lows twice as low), He really means more abundantly! 

Life with Christ doesn’t remove the ups and downs. It doesn’t stop the losses and gains, but it does give them meaning and a goal. Saint Paul bears witness to this in the Second Reading for this coming Sunday. He says: “For [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” In this life we lose many things along the way, particularly if we’re striving to be close to Christ and to “lose our life” – then we might really come face-to-face with our poverty. But the losses do not have the final word because, as we lose the things of this world and become closer to Christ, like Saint Paul we start to see them more and more as “rubbish.”

As we move through these last weeks of the Lenten season, let us take heed of this Pauline wisdom to set our eyes on the goal. The runners out there know that if you always look at your feet, you’ll probably trip and fall or lose your way. So let’s lift up our eyes to our goal, who is Christ. This may mean taking some extra time this week to read the Gospels where we can see His actions and hear His words. Maybe it will mean spending time to meditate on His life’s mysteries with Mary in the rosary or simply in silent prayer, begging to see His face. 

However we look upon Him this week, when Easter comes – and as surely as the dawn, it will come! – we will be ready with hope-filled hearts, counting everything else as loss compared with the incomparable wealth of belonging to the Risen Lord.

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Sr. Angela Burnham

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