Gospel for Thursday after Ash Wednesday

From: Luke 9:22-25

First Prophecy of the Passion
(Jesus said to His disciples), [22] "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."

The Need for Self-Denial
[23] And He said to all, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. [24] For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake, he will save it. [25] For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?"
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Commentary:
22. Jesus prophesied His passion and death in order to help His disciples believe in Him. It also showed that He was freely accepting these sufferings He would undergo. "Christ did not seek to be glorified: He chose to come without glory in order to undergo suffering; and you, who have been born without glory, do you wish to be glorified? The route you must take is the one Christ took. This means recognizing Him and it means imitating Him both in His ignominy and in His good repute; thus you will glory in the Cross, which was His path to glory. That was what Paul did, and therefore he gloried in saying, `Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Galatians 6:14)" (St. Ambrose, "Expositio Evangelii Sec. Lucam, in loc.").

23. "Christ is saying this again, to us, whispering it in our ears: the cross EACH DAY. As St. Jerome puts it: `Not only in time of persecution or when we have the chance of martyrdom, but in all circumstances, in everything we do and think, in everything we say, let us deny what we used to be and let us confess what we now are, reborn as we have been in Christ' ("Epistola" 121, 3) [...]. Do you see? The DAILY cross. No day without a cross; not a single day in which we are not to carry the cross of the Lord, in which we are not to accept His yoke" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 58 and 176). "There is no doubt about it: a person who loves pleasure, who seeks comfort, who flies from anything that might spell suffering, who is over-anxious, who complains, who blames and who becomes impatient at the least little thing which does not go his way--a person like that is a Christian only in name; he is only a dishonor to his religion for Jesus Christ has said so: Anyone who wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross every day of his life, and follow Me" (St. John Mary Vianney, "Selected Sermons", Ash Wednesday).

The Cross should be present not only in the life of every Christian but also at the crossroads of the world: "How beautiful are those crosses on the summits of high mountains, and crowning great monuments, and on the pinnacles of cathedrals...! But the Cross must also be inserted in the very heart of the world.

"Jesus wants to be raised on high, there in the noise of the factories and workshops, in the silence of libraries, in the loud clamor of the streets, in the stillness of the fields, in the intimacy of the family, in crowded gatherings, in stadiums.... Wherever there is a Christian striving to lead an honorable life, he should, with his love, set up the Cross of Christ, who attracts all things to Himself" ([St] J. Escriva, "The Way of the Cross", XI, 3).

25. By this radical statement Jesus teaches us to do everything with a view to eternal life: it is well worth while to devote our entire life on earth to attaining eternal life. "We have been warned that it profits man nothing if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectance of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, foreshadowing in some way the age which is to come. That is why, although we must be careful to distinguish earthly progress clearly from the increase of the Kingdom of Christ, such progress is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God, insofar as it can contribute to the better ordering of human society" (Vatican II, "Gaudium Et Spes", 39).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.