Reading 1
Dt 30:15-20
Moses said to the people:
“Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom.
If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,
which I enjoin on you today,
loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,
you will live and grow numerous,
and the LORD, your God,
will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen,
but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,
I tell you now that you will certainly perish;
you will not have a long life
on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy.
I call heaven and earth today to witness against you:
I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
For that will mean life for you,
a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore
he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6
Responsorial PsalmR. (40:5a)
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Gospel
Lk 9:22-25
Jesus said to his disciples:
“The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?”
Meditation: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
“Choose life!” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
More than three thousand years after Moses issued this call to the Israelites, God is still extending the same offer to us. He is urging us to live according to his ways so that we can know him and his peace more deeply. So what will you choose today? The way of life or the way of death?
We all know which way God wants us to choose, but we also know it’s not always easy to make that choice. Our faith may be weak. We may doubt that we can trust Jesus. Or we may have turned aside from his path and are not sure how to get back on the right track. Usually, when we find ourselves struggling to embrace God’s ways, the real struggle is that we have lost sight of who Jesus is. And that makes it harder to choose the life that he is calling us to live.
In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis described the choice in this way: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic … or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.”
This is Jesus: He is the Lord of heaven and earth. This is the One who is calling you to choose life! Is he trustworthy? If so, then the choice is obvious, even if it isn’t always easy.
This Lent, make it a point to choose the way of the Lord in the small decisions that you face as well as the big ones. You may not always get it right. You may even experience humbling failures at times. But you can be sure that every time you make the effort, the Holy Spirit unleashes a flow of grace to help you and strengthen you.
“Jesus, I believe that you are Lord! I choose to follow you and hold fast to you this Lent! Help me to be faithful to this choice in all that I do today.”
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