Catholic Mass Readings and Reflection March 06, 2025
Thursday after Ash Wednesday
06th March 2025 (Thursday)
Psalter: Week 4
Readings of the Day
First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Moses said to the people: “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 (R. 40:5a)
R/. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Gospel Acclamation
V/. Repent, says the Lord; the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Gospel: Luke 9:22-25
Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”
Daily Gospel Reflection
Thursday – after Ash Wednesday
Main Point: Know the ways of the Lord, and obey them; love the Lord and follow him. But, this is a strenuous and challenging path. But it is undoubtedly rewarding!
Many people today possess many things. But there is one thing that is drastically lacking. That is wisdom. Wisdom is not mere intelligence and knowledge. It is the essential inner capacity to distinguish, discern, decide between good and evil, blessing and curse, life and death, true God and false gods. It enables one to lose one’s life for the sake of the Lord instead of gaining and preserving it for the sake of the world. It realizes that it is no use to gain the whole world but lose one’s own self.
Wisdom thus makes us make a fundamental option for God. It strives ever to obey God, love Him, cling to Him, walk in His ways, keep His commandments, His statutes, and His rules. In the gospel, in Jesus’ own words, it would be a threefold way of life of a disciple: to deny the self, to take up the cross, and follow the Lord.
In fact, this triple path is the way of the cross. This is the way of the cross of the disciple which is actually the replica of the way of the cross of the Lord. The Lord’s suffering and death is the climax and summing up of an entire life of self-denial, cross-bearing, and doing God’s will.
A follower of Christ has no other way except the way of the master. We must renounce all the self-centrism and self-interests; we must retrench all the layers of the ego, the false self. We must accept and bear patiently and perseveringly all our daily crosses and difficulties. We must constantly imitate the Lord in his virtues and mission with untiring zeal and commitment.
My Practice: Following the Lord is not an easy thing. It involves a lot of sacrifice and suffering. But it is not a futile task. It is very rewarding. The Lord will bless us abundantly
