Let us pray
O LORD who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights:
give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdues to the Spirit;
we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness,
to thy honour and glory;
who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Two Ways
I love the bluntness of the reading today from
Deuteronomy (30:15-20):
“See today I set before
you life and prosperity, death and disaster.”
When put like that of course there is no choice! Who
would choose death and disaster? But actually that is what we do choose when we
do not follow God’s way. When we go our own way we are in truth opting for the
way of death and disaster. When we go the way Christ has led then we are opting
for life and prosperity. The bluntness of Deuteronomy helps to remind us of
this basic Christian truth.
This same point is reinforced in the psalm at mass
today (Ps 1). The man who places his trust in the Lord is like a tree planted
beside flowing waters that yields its fruit in due season. Following the divine
path results in the bearing of fruit – again it is a life-giving path to
follow. The result of making our decisions according to God’s ways, is life –
true life – life really worth living.
In the gospel today our Lord reveals the secret of
bearing fruit. It is paradoxical. The more we cling on and grasp onto life, the
more we lose it. When we are anxious and afraid we tend to try to grasp and to
cling in desperation. But clinging on desperately and grasping in fear do not
lead to a solution to our problems. Rather it is trusting in the Lord that will
lead us to the greatest of fruit-bearing trees: His fruit-bearing and salvific
cross.
This is the path we are to follow in our keeping of
Lent: in self-denial, in prayer and in almsgiving.
Fr
Ian
No comments:
Post a Comment