Feb 15 2024

First reading Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I set before you today life or death, blessing or curse

Moses said to the people: ‘See, today I set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin on you today, if you love the Lord your God and follow his ways, if you keep his commandments, his laws, his customs, you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to make your own. But if your heart strays, if you refuse to listen, if you let yourself be drawn into worshipping other gods and serving them, I tell you today, you will most certainly perish; you will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of the Lord your God, obeying his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists, and on this depends your long stay in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he would give them.’

Responsorial Psalm 1:1-4,6

Happy the man who has placed his trust in the Lord.

Happy indeed is the man

who follows not the counsel of the wicked;

nor lingers in the way of sinners

nor sits in the company of scorners,

but whose delight is the law of the Lord

and who ponders his law day and night.

He is like a tree that is planted

beside the flowing waters,

that yields its fruit in due season

and whose leaves shall never fade;

and all that he does shall prosper.

Not so are the wicked, not so!

For they like winnowed chaff

shall be driven away by the wind:

for the Lord guards the way of the just

but the way of the wicked leads to doom.

Gospel Luke 9:22-25

Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘The Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day.’

Then to all he said:

‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?’

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Choose life!

The first reading tells us that we have the freedom to act by choosing what is good and not what is evil, choosing life and not death. God invites us to choose life by obeying His commandments.

To choose life is to choose God as our point of reference and not the worldly desires that may bring us far away from Him.
Jesus, in the gospel, invites us to follow Him choosing life too, by not focusing ourselves on our ego, in our comfort and image that make us lose the real purpose of life, but rather to fix our eyes on Him, offering the hardships and difficulties that life brings along our way, knowing that we do not have to live them by ourselves alone because we have Jesus as the companion in our journey who lived ahead of us.

Reflective question:
How can I choose life in the midst of the routine of daily life?

Acknowledgment: Reflections are based on “Prayer for Living: The Word of God for Daily Prayer Year B” by Sr Maria Jose FMVD.