40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Thursday after Ash Wednesday, 03 March 2022 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 ><)))*> + <*(((>< Luke 9:22-25
Thank you very much, dear God our loving Father for the gift of prayer today: to pray to you, to remember you is already a choice for life, a rejection of death.
Moses said to the people: “I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the Lord swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Thank you for the gift of these 40 days of Lent for us to be conscious again of our decision to choose life, to choose you; but, Lord, what is to choose life, what is to choose YOU?
Then Jesus said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”
Luke 9:23-25
Choosing life, choosing YOU dear God means choosing to love myself, you, and others; choosing life, choosing YOU dear God means choosing the Cross of Jesus Christ your Son; how ironic that with love being the best we can have in life, it is what we always reject too as we find it hard to love our very selves and in the process, love you and others.
Choosing to love myself is to accept my giftedness, to see myself as you see me despite my sins and flaws yet still loved and forgiven; to love you, O Lord, means to enter into a personal relationship with you, to love whom you love, to simply love; and to love others is to love as myself, to find you in them especially the sick and the poor.
Oh God! How easy it is to say these because it is indeed a cross - sometimes too heavy when I love myself more than I love you or others; while we always choose life and love, in reality we choose death because we refuse to love like Jesus who gave his life for our sake so that we may also love like him.
Send me the Holy Spirit to enlighten my mind and my heart always so that in every choice I make beginning this Lent, may I be more focused with the "who" or person than the "what" or thing because it is only in YOU found within me and in every person I meet that there can truly be life, love and blessings. Amen.
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