In the Gospel for today’s Mass for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, Jesus exhorts us to come and follow Him. However, there’s a catch. The road isn’t easy.

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?

The path to following Jesus isn’t always strewn with flower petals with birds singing and butterflies fluttering. It is a hard one since in following Christ, you are essentially telling the World with its transitory and vain ways that, “Sorry! I’m rejecting you! You may claim that the World’s ways are just and true and so forth; I know different! The World’s path leads to despair and emptiness. Many are aware of this but know not what to do except to fill that emptiness with immorality. Again, sorry! I will not comply!”

And so the World reacts by persecuting you. If not outrightly, then by mockery and other means of tearing you down.

You must reject your baser instincts that desire the World and its falsehoods and take up the counter-cultural path of following Jesus. It doing that you will save your life.

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