Daily Gospel Reflection for March 2, 2017

Today's Gospel: Luke 9:22-25

This gospel reading ends with an admonition: "What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?" It's a question we ask as our families grow and our parents age. One can be stretched to the point of breaking with those crosses. With that molting and molding comes a strong desire to create a place of comfort and security. But Christ tells his disciples something far different...

"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily."

Oh dear! Where can I hide?

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

This is a hard teaching, and our society is realizing it now more than ever. As the post-World War II generation ages, a whole new world is taking over. The quiet, peaceful years we lived through after the War leave a rutted track in the dust behind us. We've been dragging our crosses with very little energy. Someone has to pick up the pieces.

Catholic mothers know that we don't always carry our crosses, sometimes we clean the crosses of others. In the arms of Catholic moms all over the world, a pained and bleeding world is laid in our arms and in that we find our mission. Mothers in every country and community are left to pick up the persecuted and weep over them and clean the victims and sweep the rutted tracks and bury the generations who have not turned their life over to the Gospel message.

[Tweet "My call might not be to carry a cross but to clean-up its aftermath. By Cay Gibson"]

Ponder:

What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?

Pray:

Dear Lord, help me to know that my call might not be to carry a cross but to clean-up its aftermath. Allow me to be the image of the Pieta which embraces a world that is lost and forfeited.