Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
For it being Fat Tuesday, Jesus is sure talking about sacrifice a lot. He is not just talking about chocolate or snacking between meals, he is talking about giving up houses, friends, and even our lives. This may not seem very cheery for Mardi Gras, but these are the very things the Lord gave up for Lent.
Jesus will spend a large portion of the Lenten readings—Holy Week, in particular Holy Week—moving away from His familiar place of ministry in Galilee toward the Passion in Jerusalem, He gave up His home. During Holy Week He has to risk losing His friendships by obeying the Father. He first loses Judas on Wednesday and His other friends by Friday afternoon, except Mary, His mother, and St. John. And of course, He gave up His life on Good Friday as payment for our inestimable debt of sin to the Father and for our chance to be reconciled to God for all eternity.
The Lord calls us to imitate Him through His Church for a mere forty days. He calls us to not give up material goods, relationships, or even our lives arbitrarily, but flowing out of our relationship with Him. He calls us to lose these things for His “sake and for the sake of the Gospel” (Matthew 10:29). He loves us more than we can ever know and went through the Passion because He wants to see us again in the homeland we were created for. When we recognize that we were made for love by Him and He went through all of that just to be with us for all eternity, what does it matter that I lose my dorm room, some friends along the way, or even my life? I want to start practicing sacrifice during this Lent with small things so I can say yes to big things. In the end, whatever we give up by His grace, we will “receive a hundred times more now in this present age…and eternal life in the age to come” (Matthew 10:31).
Reflection by Jack, seminarian
Posted in Lenten Resources