Word to the Wise
Thursday, February 27, 2020 - Thursday after Ash Wed.
[Deut 30:15-20 and Luke 9:22-25]f 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 me will save it. What profit is there one one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself." [Luke]
Lent always brings a challenge to go deeper - deeper, at least, than simply giving up something for forty days. After all, Jesus' challenge isn't geared to a liturgical season. He speaks of a "daily" cross! Yes, there are those people or situations that we refer to as "my cross to bear," but they can become so familiar to us that we learn to "live with it" and life moves on. The challenge in Jesus' words brings the "giving up" and the "cross to bear" together for us.
Lent can be a new beginning. We can identify something in our characters or habits that we know is less worthy of us and start changing it for the better and then continue to do the better thing long after Lent and Easter have passed. This could mean identifying a deficit in prayer, or learning about one's faith, or reconciling a lost or bad relationship, or reaching out on a regular basis to the less fortunate around us. Those "deficits" are not easy to correct because they have been habitual or else the product of a kind of spiritual or moral laziness that can creep into our lives. But if, weeks after Lent and Easter are over, we can see that our lives are better off because of what we began in Lent, we will see that the "daily cross" is one that we can bear with joy. AMEN