Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me

These are the words of Christ to His disciples

"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." - Mark 8:34

I was reading a blog post by someone on this and found it very useful in understanding better what it means to deny ourselves and taking up our cross. So, I am posting it here, not the complete article, but the portion which specifically talks about denying ourselves and taking up our cross. I added some notes wherever I had my own thoughts while reading this passage

What does it mean to deny ourselves? Blessed Theophylact writes that we can learn what it means to deny ourselves by considering what it means to deny another. [My notes: A good illustration in the bible is when Peter denied Christ. How about if Peter had turned around that denial on himself? Instead of denying Christ. What would he have done? Confess Christ and let come what may? Arrest? Imprisonment? Even his own death at the same time? Most likely yes. This is exactly what he does years later when Peter has finally learned to deny himself and is crucified upside down by Rome. So, in essence denying ourselves is confessing Christ in us and confessing Him alone and not even acknowledging ourselves] What do we tend to do when we see the suffering of another person? Do we intervene? Or do we go our way, and say nothing? To deny ourselves is to say nothing when it is us who are suffering – to consider ourselves as to be of no value in this world, and so to endure whatever comes our way in this world without protest, without complaint.

What does it mean to take up our Cross? It means to be willing to suffer, even die, for Christ. At some times, and in some places, this means a martyr’s death. Yet even when it is not a literal death, we are called to be willing to endure the ridicule and rejection of a “social” death – to be cut off from those who live in the world around us because we choose to follow the way of life we have been blessed to receive in the Church, rather than to live according to the ways permitted in the world. We are meant to be witnesses to Christ, to show Him present in the world because He is living in us – and so we live according to holiness, and not the way of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

[The complete article is here

http://orthodoxsermonsonline.blogspot.com/2007/03/deny-yourself-take-up-your-cross-and.html]