Deadly serious choices

The readings on this second day of Lent are powerful and stark:

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…

It sounds like a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t choose life? Who would want to be cursed?

The problem is that the world has distorted our understanding of life and blessings: the only blessing is pleasure (or at least the absence of pain) and the only life is biological (and sometimes not even that).

Thus our Lord lays out a very clear but challenging choice for us: to reject the false understandings of the world and to embrace true life, true blessings, true love, and our true selves.

"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.

What profit is there
for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?"

We make these choices daily. Sometimes we have chosen wisely, sometimes we have chosen poorly (miserere mei, Domine).

We choose again today.