Tuesday of Holy Week

"Then he [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.'"

Mark 8:34-35

"Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator--to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature. When it does so, it is good and happy. Lest we should think this a hardship, this kind of good begins on a level far above the creatures, for God Himself, as Son, from all eternity renders back to God as Father by filial obedience the being which the Father by paternal love eternally generates in the Son. This is the pattern which man was made to imitate--which Paradisal man did imitate--and wherever the will conferred by the Creator is thus perfectly offered back in delighted and delighting obedience by the creature, there, most undoubtedly, is Heaven, and there the Holy Ghost proceeds."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, New York: Macmillan, 1947, pp. 78-79.

All to Jesus I surrender,

Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;

May Thy Holy Spirit fill me,

May I know Thy pow'r divine.

I surrender all,

I surrender all.

All to Thee, my blessed Savior,

I surrender all.

(Judson W. VanDeVenter)

Prayer: Father, grant that I, by the power of your Holy Spirit, may respond to you in love, in the pattern of surrender which you established in your Son before time began, and which was enacted in Jesus on the cross two thousand years ago. Help me to take up my cross and follow Christ this day, losing my life for him and the gospel, so that therein I may find the life that is truly life, in all its fullness. Amen.

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Will Vaus

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