In the New Covenant, chronicled by the Gospels, Our Lord Jesus — the Son of God, the Christ — speaks to us as God-made-flesh, teaching us how to follow Him, on His way, on the path He marks out for us.
His path is life; it ultimately leads us to resurrection. However, before we arrive at resurrection, we must first pass through death. Because, the path to life is also the Way of the Cross.
This is how we can understand the important place that penance and self-denial have during Lent. No matter what kind of penance we are doing throughout Lent, it involves the gift of self. The value, the effectiveness of our penance to help us to reform our lives is in direct proportion to the amount of self we are giving.
You see, we possess a limited amount of self. It is a treasure. Your self is hard to give away — at any price. To do penance during Lent involves giving away bits and pieces of our self, as gifts to God and to others. That gift of our self means quite a lot to the ones we offer it to! By willingly and generously giving away those bits and pieces of our self now, we are made ready for the day when God Our Father will ask us to give Him the total gift of our self – to surrender all of our self to Him – at the moment of our death.
Our Lord Jesus gave all of Himself to God His Father— for us! And look at the powerful results: Life forever! The Christ still gives us Himself, every day, in His Body and Blood, in the Holy Eucharist. The effectiveness of our Holy Communion with Him will be in direct proportion to the amount of self we are offering back to Him.
Lent is the season of self-offering, in which we must choose between the blessing and the curse, between life and death. Let’s choose Life: Christ’s Life!
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