Our Lenten message for today cannot get plainer: it contains three parts: 1) God utterly respects our freedom of choosing between two opposite realities; 2) God has authored the way leading to life, which involves a choice on our part; 3) we, each, must deliberately choose life in order to get life – life here, and life everlasting!
The first reading from Deuteronomy beautifully illustrates God's respect for us as the intelligent creatures that he made us: he wants us to have life, he wants us to have gifts, he wants us to be with him forever – but he does not want to force it upon us – and so he places a dish before us with two entrees: life, with a side-dish of prosperity; and death, with a side-dish of doom. He then tells us to choose: but he expresses his own hopeful opinion in the matter: CHOOSE LIFE and the blessing; not DEATH and the curse!
Every person who has ever lived has had to make the choice: now it is our turn! What is your choice? What is my choice?
In the gospel passage Jesus tells us the same thing but only from another point of view – but it is not contrary to the choice God his Father placed before the people of old: Jesus says you must choose the cross in order to get life; choose to endure whatever suffering comes along in life, or is sent by the Father as a test; choose death to self-will so that all of the benefits of my death on the Cross and resurrection can be yours!
They can be, if we choose the cross! And so choosing life, and choosing the cross, are really the same thing!
This Lent may we embrace our cross, love our cross and unite it to the Cross of Christ which gives it power to save us and bring us to an amazing new life that is waiting for us!
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
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