Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Today's Mass Readings

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, when we were reminded of our death. The readings for today continue that theme of death but also contrast it with life. In the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses offered the Israelites two paths: a path to life and a path to death. Moses says that if we want life, we must follow the commandments of the Lord. That seems easy enough. We just need to follow a couple of rules. On the contrary, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the crowd that there will be daily crosses and struggles on the path to salvation and eternal rest with God. We may not always be successful at picking up the cross daily, but as our responsorial psalm tells us, we must have hope in the Lord. We can find strength in know that even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ fell under the weight of the cross on His way to his crucifixion. More importantly, despite the pain, getting up after each fall shows us that we too must get up when seems like our cross is unbearable. We must pick up the cross and endure the struggles in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

However, there is more to these passages than the stark difference between the path to life and the path to death. These passages also remind us that in order to live, we must first die. Many of the saints did this literally by being martyred for the Catholic faith. Most of us, however, are not to be martyrs in the literal sense. Going back to the passage from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites that in order live, they must follow the commands of the Lord. By following the will of God, we set aside our own wants and desires in order to have everlasting life. We die to ourselves in order to have life in Christ. In the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that He will die and rise from the dead. Jesus Himself had to die in order to give us life. This is what we are called to do this Lenten season: to die to ourselves and to offer our wants and desires to the Lord in order to receive the risen Christ at Easter and gain the promise of everlasting life.

Reflection by Collin, seminarian