Thursday, March 6, 2014

Today's Word:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030614.cfm

My high school chemistry teacher once told our class, “Each day when you wake up in the morning, you have a choice as to what attitude you will bring to the day.  You can choose to be positive or negative.  The choice is yours.”

Today's readings offer us a similar choice.  In the first reading, Moses sets before us “life and death, the blessing and the curse” and asks us to choose.  The Gospel seems to present a contradiction, however, when Jesus says, “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  What does it mean to choose life if to choose life means to lose it?  What is Jesus asking of us?

Jesus is inviting us to love. 

Jesus shows us choosing life means choosing love; the kind of love that is absolute freedom and authenticity. It is loving ourselves and others for all that we are, and all we are not.  It is owning our gifts and talents and sharing them generously to help meet the needs of the world.  It is following our passions for the good of others. 

 

This type of love enables us to be authentic, that is, being who we are when we are most fully alive.  When Jesus asks us to deny ourselves, I don’t think he is telling us to give up being ourselves.  In fact, quite the opposite.  It is as if Jesus is telling us to get out of our own way so we can be fully free to be who God is creating us to be.  We give ourselves freely to what and whom we love and in doing so, we lose our lives to what we love.  We find freedom and we find God.

As we enter into Lent, I invite you to wake each morning and to make the decision to choose life, that is, to choose love.  Love yourself fully and freely for who you are – limitations included!; follow your passions and talents and share them generously with others; give yourself to that which and whom you most love.  In doing so, you will lose your life.  But you will also find God and bring God’s love to life in the world.

Erin Hoffman

Assistant Director of Campus Ministry for Spiritual Programs