This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
It would be nice if life were not a binary, black-and-white choice. But it is.
It is a fact that all people are a mix of good and bad; therefore, it may be said, in a sense, that all people are good. Evil is the absence of good; therefore, since all people have good in them, all people are good.
But in the end, there are only life and death; there is no in-between. And it is not people who are all bad who choose death over life. Only good people make this bad choice–because all people are, at least in part, good. And unfortunately, the good people who make this bad choice are not few.
The choice offered to the Israelites in the first reading is a binary one: life, or death. Jesus draws the same line in the gospel, and fills it with color: Only those who lose their life–that is, give it away, to God and others–will save their lives.
Ours is an age where many want to blur these lines, holding that even those who ignore God and do not live life as a gift will be saved in the end. But this belief contradicts Jesus.
Many will die this day; many who have made the wrong choice. Our mission, like Jesus, is to offer our prayers and sufferings for sinners, that God may inject into them an extra, special dose of His grace so that they may discover how desirable He is and convert to Him.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to stir in your heart a love for the welfare, eternal and earthly, of your brothers and sisters. Ask Him to make of you a fruitful and productive offering for souls.
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