I still remember a story from junior high more than fifty years ago. I believe the name of it was “The Lady or the Tiger?” A man was captured and sentenced to choose between two doors that looked exactly alike. Behind one door was a beautiful lady whom he could have as his own for a happy life. Behind the other was a tiger who would eat him. He literally had to make a choice between life and death.
He had nothing to guide him in making such a choice.
To be put in that situation was not a loving action—more a matter of entertainment for onlookers or good plot by an author.
It was not something God would do.
God, however, does give us choices between life and death.
Every day we face multiple choices that sooner or later lead to physical life or death: the choice to drive carefully or recklessly, the choice to follow one medical treatment or another, the choice to eat healthily or not, the choice to use drugs or misuse alcohol…This list goes on.
God also gives us choices about eternal life or death. Lent is a time to remember we have such choices and to explore practices which will help us make choices for life. As we begin Lent, our readings today give us some guidance to get us started.
In the first reading the children of Israel are told by God they have a choice as they return to their native land of Canaan after centuries in Egypt and forty years in the Sinai desert. “I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.” “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then…”
For the Israelites it was not a matter of blind decision or fate which they would choose. They had real, free choice. They could make an informed decision. The way to choose life was to “obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,….loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes, and decrees.”
Stopping to really think about that is a way to begin our Lent. How do you define the meaning of “obey the commandments of the LORD, your God?” The 10 Commandments? The Sermon on the Mount? Part Three of the Catechism? The Rule of a particular saint or religious group? Scripture as a whole? The guidance of parish priest, local bishop, pope, or Magisterium?
One of the wonderful things about the Catholic Church is that we don’t have to define the Truth of God’s commands. ANY of those ways of looking at what God asks of us will likely lead us to objective Truth by which we can measure ourselves. True, within the Catholic faith there are many presentations of God’s objective Truth, but they all are founded on scripture. They all dovetail to create a comprehensive universal design for choosing life. Details of HOW that Truth is lived may vary tremendously from continent to continent, age to age, culture to culture, person to person.
But we are all called. Jesus says it very clearly today. He notes that for him, the way to eternal life includes self-sacrifice and temporary death. “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.’” He set the bar pretty high.
Then he told all who were listening what they must do. “If 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 my sake will save it.”
He gives the clincher sentence: “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”
Have you ever lost yourself? I have. More than once. I lost myself in family troubles during a dark time. I lost myself in humanism for several years. For a day or two, I can STILL lose myself in worry about a problem, enthusiasm for a project, or just my own design for the day.
Such was almost the case for today.
As I began to write this reflection early this morning my son called me. My grandson was sick and needed someone to take him to the doctor. Neither parent could do it. Could I?
At first I said no. I had a full day planned with commitments to multiple people at church and work.
But God wanted me to say yes. He gave me a nudge by having my first appointment at work cancel. That was enough for me to rethink and recognize God might have a different plan for my day—and maybe even for my Lent.
I took Clayton to the doctor. He has both Type A flu and strep throat. Not only do I need to keep him today, now I have been exposed, it would not be good for me to take ashes and communion to the homebound as I had intended. The flu or strep could literally cost some of them their lives.
God brought the message of Lent home to me clearly: “If 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 my sake will save it.”
A friend and I are reading a book, Fr. John Riccardo’s Heaven Starts Now: Becoming a Saint Day by Day. In the introduction he quotes Auxiliary Bishop Mike Byrnes of Detroit. Bishop Byrnes said, “We need serious application of the Scripture to our lives right now so that we can begin to live the life of heaven NOW, not just GET to heaven.”
That’s an interesting thought with which to begin Lent.
Fr. Riccardo then suggests that we make a plan to get to heaven—which is to choose life. He writes then of seven areas that God expects us to do by his standards: forgiveness, fear and anxiety, suffering, greed, surrender, praise and worship, and the primacy of love.
I had already identified “surrender” as a place that I need to grow closer to God’s standards. True, I’ve worked on it for years, but to let go of plans is very, very hard for me. Yet, as I enter retirement in June, I know it is what God calls me—serious, complete surrender. It was to be a part of my Lent. I wasn’t sure, beyond prayer, how I might do it.
So, this morning sitting in the clinic, a BIG SMILE came on my face.
God is taking my choice to surrender seriously. He started by totally disrupting my plans for Ash Wednesday. To get my attention? Because he has something else for me to do today? Because I might have been exposed to the flu from family earlier this week and carry infection unwittingly to someone vulnerable? Because my family needed me? Because this is the angle he wanted me to write about today—to help someone on the other side of the world?
Who knows! God had his reasons. I don’t need to know them. I just need to take up this not-so-awful cross today and deny myself my own plans.
It’s kind of nice to know God takes such interest in me!
He takes just as much interest in you!
God wants us all in heaven for eternity. He also wants us to choose the blessing, to choose life now. As the psalm today says, “Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked nor wlaks in the way of sinners…but delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on it day and night.”
Prayer:
Thank you, Lord, that you used events this morning to bring home to me a call to more fully surrender to you. In this small thing I can trust that you know best. I can willingly sacrifice my plans for the day for yours. Help me now use this small thing to more fully commit to surrendering to you in all things. If this is to be my work for Lent, give me the grace to embrace it fully and be changed. If it is a temporary, isolated thing, help me see that and go on to what you would change in me. In all things, Lord, be thou my vision!
