Today's Gospel reminds us of what we are preparing for during Lent - our commemoration of the extraordinary way in which Jesus communicated God's love to us by His terrible suffering, death and rising again to life. It must have come as a great shock to Jesus' disciples when He first warned them of what was coming. They had other dreams of what the Messiah would do for His people. But today Jesus goes even further. Not only will Jesus Himself suffer and die but He expects every one of His followers to go through their own form of suffering as they let go of everything in their desire to follow their Master in love and service. Paradoxically, it is only when we let go of things which may seem very precious to us that we will find life in its fullness. As the First Reading counsels us: "Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of the Lord your God, obeying His voice, clinging to Him; for in this your life consists, and on this depends your long stay in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers ... he would give them." That land is the Kingdom which Jesus came to inaugurate.