Gospel Reflection - Take Up Our Cross and Follow Jesus (3/6/2025)

#newPODCAST Gospel Reflection - Take Up Our Cross and Follow Jesus (3/6/2025) 🙏❤🕊

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In today’s first reading, from the Book of Deuteronomy, the Lord our God, through Moses, set before us the choices that we have to make in our life.

I have set before you

life and prosperity, death and doom.

The Lord God also said:

I have set before you life and death,

the blessing and the curse.

The Lord God desires us to “Choose life. . . For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live”

We do this when we:

If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,

which I enjoin on you today,

loving him, and walking in his ways,

and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,

And when we do, the Lord promises us that:

you will live and grow numerous,

and the LORD, your God,

will bless you

This Lent (and going forward), let us turn to the Lord and be

like a tree

planted near running water,

That yields its fruit in due season,

and whose leaves never fade.

Whatever he does, prospers.

Let us turn away from temptation and sin because:

Not so the wicked, not so;

they are like chaff which the wind drives away.

For the LORD watches over the way of the just,

but the way of the wicked vanishes.

Through the Lent disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we can be equipped to deny ourselves of worldly attachments and yolk ourselves to our Lord Jesus Christ whose yolk is easy and burden light.

Let us take up our cross daily and follow our Christ through the desert, to the Cross, and to eternal life because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life.

Jesus asks us an important question in today’s Gospel:

What profit is there for one to gain the whole world

yet lose or forfeit himself?

Every day, we have a decision to make, to follow God and lead others to our Lord Jesus Christ or not and continue on the path that will only lead to our destruction. . . in this life. . . and lose eternal life with our Lord and our God forever. . .

Let us pray. . .

Lord Jesus Christ, send your Spirit to be with us and grant us the wisdom and courage to deny ourselves of those things that lead on away from you but cling on to the heavenly treasures that you have blessed us with in our lives. Help us to grow in faith, hope, and love this Lent through the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Amen.

. . .

Gospel of the Day (Luke 9:22-25)

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."

Then he said to all,

"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?"