A life and death matter! That’s what our choices in life amount to, a choice of life or death.\u00a0 And yet it is ironic that the meaning of life and death in both readings today is actually reversed compared to the way the secular world looks at these two terms.\u00a0 For those of us who are Christians, real life means everlasting life, not life in this world as we know it.\u00a0 Very clearly, we have to pass through death to get to that everlasting life, and in fact, there are several layers of death that lead to the everlasting life that is referred to. Jesus talks about both- first dying unto yourself and doing God’s will; then, suffering and actually dying physically so that you are no longer of this world.\u00a0 Jesus tells his disciples that He will endure both to achieve eternal life.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
By contrast, the secular world values life in the world at all costs- they emphasize a certain quality of life of comfort and leisure.\u00a0 And so people do whatever is required to prolong life in this world, especially a comfortable life.\u00a0 They try to avoid both layers of death that I mentioned above.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet, the bad kind of death that both Moses and Jesus refer to is anything we do that puts us on the outside with God.\u00a0 We face that bad kind of death when we reject his will for us,\u00a0 People who just seek comfort and leisure and a long life rather than living God’s will for them,\u00a0 are choosing this awful kind of death, not life because no matter who you are, you cannot stave off physical death forever.\u00a0 But you can reject everlasting life by putting yourself first.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite Holiday movies is “It’s a Wonderful Life”.\u00a0 The hero, George Bailey, wants a different life for himself than the one he is born into.\u00a0 Rather than live in a small town and take over his father’s business, George wants to get away, see this world, and do something “big” by the world’s standards.\u00a0 But circumstances, and his conscience, force him into living the life he was given, not the one he wanted.\u00a0 And so, anger and frustration develop, and he wishes he’d never been born.\u00a0 As the story goes, a funky kind of angel is sent to rescue George by granting him his wish.\u00a0 He shows George how much worse off his little world would be if he had never been born.\u00a0 George comes to realize this when the angel tells him that “He really did live a wonderful life”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
God, in his goodness, puts all of us into the world at a certain place and time and station so that we will bloom where we are planted.\u00a0 There are many joys in that life for most of us- happy times in childhood; a love story that pairs us with a wonderful spouse; talents that lead to jobs that challenge and delight us; and children and grandchildren that fill us with joy.\u00a0 Along with all of these joys are pain and suffering, and everybody is dealt some pain and suffering.\u00a0 We see illnesses like Cancer and Alzheimers and Parkinsons and the like in our families; job losses and broken relationships and losses of dear ones.\u00a0 They are the crosses we are called to bear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lent is a time to reflect on the call to carry our crosses.\u00a0 Lent is a time for us to choose life.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday After Ash Wednesday Dt 30: 15-20; Lk 9: 22-25 Dc. Larry Brockman A life and death matter! That’s what our choices in life amount to, a choice of life or death.\u00a0 And yet it is ironic that the meaning of life and death in both readings today is actually reversed compared to the way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}