+ Today we have two short and powerful seemingly contradictory messages from our readings: the choice is yours: between life and death: choose life; lose your life to find it! In the first reading the people of Israel are encouraged to choose life – the ways of God, rather than choosing death, the ways of stubborn selfishness and resistance to God's saving plan of salvation. In the gospel passage Jesus actually encourages his disciples to choose "loss of life" in order to "gain life" – deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me – but this is a different kind of losing, a different kind of death. It is a voluntary giving of ourselves totally into the hands of God's care. It is losing grip of our own need to control and letting things work out as they are best suited to work out – as they have been planned by God.
As Lent begins let us then both choose life, and choose spiritual detachment or death of sorts – so that the bountiful results of joy and life can be also experienced!
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
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