Editor’s Note: At the beginning of Lent, I composed a short reflection based on some of the readings from scripture at daily mass. Now that Lent is coming to a close this week, with Easter Sunday fast approaching, I feel that it would be beneficial to share it with you all. I am first including a copy of the scripture from which I wrote the reflection (in the Douay-Rheims translation), and have attached my short reflection afterward.
Scripture Readings for the Reflection:
Deuteronomy 30:15-20: Consider that I have set before thee this day life and good, and on the other hand death and evil: that thou mayst love the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways, and keep his commandments and ceremonies and judgments, and thou mayst live, and he may multiply thee, and bless thee in the land, which thou shalt go in to possess. But if thy heart be turned away, so that thou wilt not hear, and being deceived with error thou adore strange gods, and serve them: I foretell thee this day that thou shalt perish, and shalt remain but a short time in the land, to which thou shalt pass over the Jordan, and shalt go in to possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both thou and thy seed may live: And that thou mayst love the Lord thy God, and obey his voice, and adhere to him (for he is thy life, and the length of thy days,) that thou mayst dwell in the land, for which the Lord swore to thy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give it them.
Psalms 1: 1-4: Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper. Not so the wicked, not so: but like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth.
Matthew 4:17: From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Luke 9:22-25: Saying: The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the ancients and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day rise again. And he said to all: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; for he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, and cast away himself?
Reflection:
These readings, which include Moses’s admonition to the people that they not stray from the commandments given to him, a psalm reminding us that God is just both in punishments and rewards, and then Our Blessed Lord first telling the people to repent and then telling his disciples to pick up their crosses and follow him may seem to be disconnected at first glance. However, they are all interconnected, insofar as they are all a reminder that it is God, not we, who is sovereign over the universe, who has numbered all of our days (Psalm 139), and thus it is up to us to choose with the time that He has allotted for us. We are presented with a choice: do we choose the easy way that the “city of man” has presented to us, or do we choose the greater prize, that earned through repentance and sacrifice, and made possible by the sacraments. Furthermore, the readings ask us which we are choosing. Are we choosing to pick up our crosses, or are we choosing the easy way out. As Our Lord, Jesus Christ, reminds us in the reading from Matthew, we must repent, as the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, and it is by our repentance that we can turn towards God, who became man and died for us, and pick up our crosses. It was this God that first presented himself to Moses and led the Israelites out of Egypt, just as he will lead us from sin by his grace and for our sake, that we might glorify him.