Then [Jesus] said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit their very self. Luke 9:23-25
“The spiritual consequences of attachments…need to be healed…We choose to be greedy, lustful, selfish because we like what these things bring us, but we give no thought (no effective thought) to their consequences for ourselves and others. Because of the element of choice involved and because our will, as well as our woundedness, maintains our attachments, letting go of them can be like dying…To let it die is part of what Christ meant when he spoke about losing our life in order to save it. We must lose the things we fasten on to because we think them essential to our lives, so that we can save the true life we live in God.”
Frances Teresa in Living the Incarnation (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1993) 78.