A life devoted unto God, looking wholly unto Him in all our actions, and doing all things suitably to His glory, is so
far from being dull, and uncomfortable, that it creates new comforts in everything that we do.
… William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728]
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DT 30:15-20; PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
LK 9:22-25
Jesus said to his disciples:
"The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised."
Then he 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?"
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
The Gospel we hear today has also the theme of loosing or gaining “life.” Jesus reflects upon how He is choosing life by living His identity and by living that way He will suffer, experience a suffering death, but rise. To His followers He offers them a similar invitation.
Winning,
loosing, gaining, forfeiting are frightening terms when applied to “life.” Here is the Lenten call. “Life” is a gift which is not gained or won. At our reception of the Eucharist we are celebrating our poverty with empty, open hands. What a dramatic gesture. What is even more dramatic is that Jesus enters that poverty and invites us to take It in for “life” and live all the moments of our days in generous gratitude.
The relationship which God initiates, God sustains and we extend through living gratefully. This is the New Law, relating gratefully, generously, and universally. It is this
way of “life” to which Lent reminds us and to which those entering the Church at the Easter Vigil are hoping to experience within them and around them. So we wash our faces this morning as a gesture of purpose. We wash away the ashiness of our lives, how temporary our lives are and with brightness of heart, not sadness, we enter, (as we pray in the First Preface for Lent) “this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed. You give us a spirit of
loving reverence for You, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbor.”
- by Larry Gillick,
S.J.
Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 47 “I beheld the property of Mercy, and I beheld the property of Grace: which have two manners
of working in one love “
Mercy is a sweet gracious working in love, mingled with plenteous pity: for mercy worketh in keeping us, and mercy worketh turning to us all things to good. Mercy, by love, suffereth us to fail in measure and in as much as we fail, in so much we fall; and in as much as we fall, in so much we die: for it needs must be that we die in so much as we fail of the sight and feeling of God that is our life. Our failing is dreadful, our falling is
shameful, and our dying is sorrowful: but in all this the sweet eye of pity and love is lifted never off us, nor the working of mercy ceaseth.
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