Life and Death and Life

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s first reading (Deut 30:15-20), Moses presents the Israelite people with a choice: they can choose either life or death, blessing or curse, the one true God or many false gods and idols. This choice is a constant theme throughout the Old Testament, and the Hebrew people struggle, sometimes choosing false gods, and sometimes turning to God. It is a choice and a struggle that has great consequences. In choosing for God, the people can be assured of God’s protections. In abandoning God, however, the people may face their own destruction. In many ways, this choice and struggle is like our own. Daily we make decisions that are either for God or for false gods like money. Surely we strive to make choices that are for God. But what does that even mean? The gospel reading from Luke (Luke 9:22-25) presents the answer to this question. To choose life, is, ironically to choose death to ourselves, to “lose our lives” for the sake of Christ. In other words, in order to be truly alive, we must live only for Christ. It is in doing this that we actually find out who we are. By losing our lives to Christ, we find them again in a much more powerful way. And this is how we make the choice for God.

In this season of Lent (as throughout the rest of the year), we strive to conform ourselves to Christ. Lent reminds us of the sacrifice that is involved in this endeavor. Christ sacrificed his life to bring life to all through his death. We must make our own, albeit less significant, sacrifices. The practices of lent – fasting, almsgiving, prayer – are ways that we try to lose ourselves for the sake of Christ. They are how we make choices that are for God.

When framed in this way, being Christian seems a daunting task. Can we ever live up to these expectations of losing our lives to Christ in order to find them again more authentically? The season of Lent serves to remind us that we will sometimes fail. We cannot always conform ourselves to Christ as we would wish. And yet, it does no good to berate ourselves when we struggle with our Lenten practices. We must, instead, be open to God’s grace in strengthening us, and be willing to try again, with that grace, when we fail.

As we kick off this season of Lent, may we strive to choose life for ourselves by choosing the death that leads to true life in Christ!

- Maria Morrow