In our Gospel reading today, our Lord uses the example of a grain of wheat to illustrate the fruits that come from the death of our focus on our own lives and comfort, and the subsequent fruits that are possible if we can forego this focus. When we die to self, our ability to focus on loving our Lord, and our brothers and sisters becomes unencumbered and great things are possible with this freedom of spirit. Our Lord showed us the way of this, He died to self each day by focusing on others, and He ultimately died on the cross for each one of us in order to once and for all offer the perfect expiation for our sins.
How often have we said to ourselves that we could accomplish more in terms of taking care of the needs of others if we only had more time to do so? The real question is not what we could accomplish if we had more time, but rather, what is it in our lives that is taking up all of our time now and precluding us from accomplishing this? Each day we have choices to make in terms of how we spend our time. Much of it is relatively immutable, we know that we must work to sustain ourselves and our families, we know that we must take care of certain tasks within our homes to maintain things so that all can live in some semblance of order. However, there is more often than not some time left that we have the choice to determine how we spend it. This is where the dying to self comes in. We can choose to veg out a bit in front of the television or computer, or perhaps unwind in some other way, neither of which is an inherently bad pursuit, but we should also consider what we can do with our time to spend it a bit more productively for our Lord and for our brothers and sisters.
It can seem daunting to try to figure out ways we can help if left solely to our own devices, but there is an easier way. There are ministries that exist within our Church community that can act as already defined conduits of activity that will benefit others. We can look at the various ones that exist and choose what we think we are best suited for, in other words we do not have to reinvent the wheel as part of this pursuit to serve our brothers and sisters. Everyone has some gift that they can contribute their time and energy toward. We can raise food for others in the garden, we can take communion to those who cannot come to Mass, we can perform repair work around the Church if we are handy with such things, or we can simply spend our time with those who otherwise have no one to visit them as part of our homebound ministries. Everyone has some gift to contribute, and perhaps the greatest of these is simply our time and compassion.
When we lose ourselves, and instead look to the needs of others, we lose our lives in this world for the care and love of others, and through them we extend this love and caring toward our Lord. This is what He is speaking of when explaining to us how to preserve ourselves for eternal life by hating the focus on our own lives in the here and now. If we cannot let go of that focus on self, we remain a single useless grain of wheat, but when we die to self, that grain falls upon good soil and yields the fruits that propel us toward eternal life with our Lord. This might sound like we are perhaps being called to forsake happiness in the here and now, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that once we have gone down the path of placing others, and ultimately our Lord ahead of ourselves, we will discover, perhaps for the first time, what true happiness in this life is all about. That is a grace that I pray will be bestowed upon each one of us.
The Deacons Bench 