Thursday After Ash Wednesday Reflection
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February 23, 2023
Today’s Mass Readings seem to be in contradiction. In Deuteronomy, we are urged to choose life, not death. Obeying the laws of God will result in long life and prosperity. The Responsorial Psalm assures us that the just man will prosper while the wicked are "like chaff driven away in the wind." Yet, Jesus says in the Gospel that whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Jesus' sake will save it. Here it certainly sounds like he is saying to choose death, not life. However, in choosing death for his sake, we will have life. This is the great paradox of love. In loving, we sacrifice our selfishness, our time, and our talent. Love requires true death, yet only in loving are we considered truly alive. Love grows through a million acts of self-forgetfulness as we focus on the good of the other and love slowly dies through a million acts of selfishness as we turn in on ourselves.
Our Lenten penances are meant to strike at our self-absorption, sacrificing creature comforts to open our hearts to God and our neighbor. They are not meant to be a source of spiritual pride. The goal is not to set a track record of perfectly kept penances so we can congratulate ourselves on our strong willpower. Christ tells us to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. We know he himself fell under the weight of his cross, and we will surely fall time and time again under the weight of our selfishness, but Jesus carried his cross perfectly because he carried it out of love. And this is how we can carry our crosses as well. In the end, Deuteronomy and Psalm number one will be right, not that we will necessarily achieve success, prosperity, and long life in this world, but we will possess and be possessed by Eternal Life itself.