The Choice That Is No Choice

Voice over by Eliz

Deut 30:15-20, Psalm: 1, Lk 9:22-25

My dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

At the heart of our faith lies not a vague suggestion, but a clear, urgent, and life-defining choice. It is a choice presented to us in stark terms today: between life and death, between gaining the world and losing our souls. As we continue our Lenten journey, the Word of God places this ultimate decision before us, not to frighten us, but to focus us; not to discourage, but to set us free for the only path that leads to true joy.

Moses, standing before the Israelites on the threshold of the Promised Land, frames their entire future as a choice. “I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom… Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.” The choice for life is a choice to “love the Lord, your God, heed his voice, and hold fast to him.” It is a choice for covenant, for relationship, for obedience. The alternative is to turn away, to worship other gods—the gods of self, of power, of pleasure. Moses’ plea is passionate because the stakes could not be higher: our choices have eternal consequences.

Centuries later, Jesus takes this choice and reveals its startling, paradoxical depth. He tells His disciples plainly that He “must suffer greatly and be rejected… and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Then, He turns to all of us: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Here is the full revelation of what “choosing life” now means. It is not choosing ease, safety, or worldly success. It is choosing the pattern of Christ’s own life: the path of self-emptying love, of sacrificial obedience to the Father’s will. This is the paradox: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Lent makes this choice concrete. It is our annual training ground in choosing the life that looks like death to the world. We choose to fast from what we crave, to pray when we could be distracted, to give when we could keep. In these small daily denials, we learn to let go of the false self that clings to the world, so that our true self, made for God, can emerge.

The German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But this death to self is the only gateway to life that is truly life. St. Thérèse of Lisieux understood this, offering every little suffering, every daily annoyance, as a way of losing her life for Christ.

So today, the Lord asks you: What will you choose? The immediate gratification that ultimately leaves you empty, or the difficult, daily cross that leads to resurrection? The world’s applause, or the Father’s “Well done, good and faithful servant”?

Choose life. Choose the cross. Choose Him. For in that choice, and only in that choice, is our salvation found. Amen.

May God bless you all!