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40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Thursday after Ash Wednesday, 23 February 2023 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 ><000'> + ><000'> + ><000'> Luke 9:22-25
Everyday you bless us, O God, with that great power to choose freely what we desire best for us; but, many times, we make the wrong choices that often lead us to more pains and emptiness, sadness and that feeling of being lost.
Most of all, we choose sin, we choose evil, than choosing good, than choosing you, O God.
Moses said to the people: “I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the Lord swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
So many times we make the wrong choices when we insist on what we like without really knowing what it is; we make wrong choices when we choose to disregard you and your ways, Lord; worst, we make the wrong choices because we reject our very selves!
What a tragedy when we ourselves refuse to believe in ourselves, in our worth, in our possibilities because we have lost all hope in life, in you, and in others due to failures or disappointments or frustrations in life; we choose wrongly when we avoid pains and sufferings, when we refuse to choose the Cross not realizing it is the one that truly leads to life and prosperity because every suffering, every pain leads to maturity that make us better and more open to life and prosperity.
These 40 days of Lent, let us choose you, Jesus including your Cross; let us choose people and things outside of ourselves because you have chosen to care us and all our needs; let us trust you so we may always choose you because the times we choose wrongly in life, when we choose people and things that are seemingly favorable to us, that is when we do doubt you, when we do not trust you. Amen. Jesus, King of Mercy, we trust in you!
