Whoever loses their life for my sake will save it

Luke 9, 24

Choose life. This is the tagline for Danny Boyle’s 1990s film, 'Trainspotting'. It is a film about a group of heroin addicts growing up in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh. It follows Mark Renton and his friends who try to “choose life” away from the destructive effects of heroin abuse. 

If we are honest we all have a Mark Renton within us. To a greater or lesser extent, we can all be guilty of finding ways to numb the more painful aspects of life. For most of us, the distractions are not as extreme as those in Trainspotting, but we know that the distractions are out there, and there are many. 

The monk Erik Varden, in his book ‘The Shattering of Loneliness’, wrote that the aftermath of the Second World War had one strangely positive effect on him as a boy: “I acquired a sense of the seriousness of existence. (…) Before I could have known what the world meant, I had tired of superficiality.” 

Rather than remain at a superficial level of life, he began to face the anguish of the world head-on, and this helped him see it within the context of a greater reality; a loving and personal presence that embraced the pain of the world. He wanted to learn its name and discern its features. He realised that our lives, broken and fragile, were held within the healing and infinite life of God. 

This is the life that Moses points to when he tells the people to “choose life” in today’s first reading. Our lives are limited, but there is a life - or Life - which changes everything and makes all things possible. The ashes of yesterday show us that we are not God. We are not omnipotent. We can choose lives which kid us that the opposite is true, or we can accept the invitation to choose true Life, and allow it to save ours. 

A reflection written by Gianni Notarianni O.S.A., Parish Priest of St Augustine's Hammersmith, London and Director of Austin Forum 

Follow the Order of Saint Augustine (O.S.A.), Province of England and Scotland  

theaugustinians.org | Facebook | Twitter