The Gospel for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday:
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?”
Taking up your daily cross is something few really enjoy doing. Even if you pray every morning the traditional Morning Offering (or any variant) in which you offer up all of your prayers, joys, and sufferings; and habitually “offer up” to God when the happen your pains, aches, fears, worries and anxieties; insults and attacks on your dignity as a human person; and all the other “stuff” that happens throught the day that we wish would just “go away,” it is still preferable for any f that to not have happened.
Yet Jesus is clear, if we are to folllow Him as His disciples, we must join ourselves to His propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary. Just as He was offered up in sacrifice to atone for the sins He was not guilty of; so, to, must we offer ourselves and our sorrows and sufering to atone for the sins we did not commit. All sin is an affron to God and disturbs the moral order, which has an impact in the physival world. Therefore, when we accept our crosses, we help out in repairing some order to the world about us.
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