Fr. Scalia posted this at The Catholic Thing:
The choice between Jesus Barabbas and Jesus Christ really comes down to the choice between self-preservation and self-gift. It is the fundamental choice that our Lord articulates repeatedly and that He returns to shortly before His Passion: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (Jn 12:25; cf. Mt 16:25; Lk 17:33)
Barabbas is the image of the man who loves his life and seeks to preserve it at all costs. Rebellion, robbery, and murder are just different ways he’s sought to keep his petty little kingdom secure. On the other hand, our Lord – beaten, scourged, and crowned with thorns – is the man who hates His life in this world. He has lost everything: power, possessions, health, dignity, friends, etc. Yet He knows that this loss is not the end but the beginning – the sowing of a seed.
We have followed Barabbas in embracing this disordered self-preservation. We could call it pride, but that word in our culture typically implies a proper self-assertion and demand for recognition. Although it can be those things, more often than not our pride – that preservation of our lives, comfort, and reputation above all else – is not high and strong, but peevish and weak. In the interest of self-preservation, the Apostles run away and abandon our Lord. To preserve his life, Peter flinches at the questions of a servant girl and denies Christ. To preserve his trivial reign, Pilate hands Christ over to be crucified.
This inordinate fear of losing our autonomy, this grasping to preserve our lives, is the taproot of all sin.
Read the entirety here.
bar (son of) abbas (the father), a nobody-- or Son of (The Father) God, a savior
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