Thursday after Ash Wednesday - February 23, 2023
The WORD in LENT: Deuteronomy 30: 15-20; Luke 9: 22-25
Very often we complain and lament on things that go wrong in our lives, blaming it on someone or something! Without uncompassionately brushing aside the pain that is involved in the experience of trouble or loss or difficulty, if we seek to find the real cause, the root cause, the ultimate cause... we shall find there, a choice!
When situations of conflicts arise, when persons around create a crisis or events of life rake up problems... what matters is not actually what happens, but what we choose! We make choices that, may not be immediately, but eventually take us to where we find ourselves at the end. If everything is a choice, just so or more so, peace is a choice!
If I wish peace in my mind, in my heart and in my life - I have to choose it. If I choose ego, if I choose success, if I choose prosperity, if I choose profit or my own material growth, I choose them! Yes, I choose them, and not peace! Choosing peace sometimes, or most of the times in fact, costs! I have to be ready to pay the cost. That is what Jesus means by "taking up my cross" - it is choosing to pay the cost, for the divine peace that we can find only in the Lord and in the salvation that the Lord has planned for us.
We may think we are choosing life, or that we are choosing prosperity... but in actuality we might be choosing death and disaster! We need to pay attention. What matters is not immediate gratification but the ultimate good. At times it might require sacrifices and mortifications. If we need peace, we need to choose it, because peace is a choice!
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