When I was growing up, my father whenever we were driving, every once in a while, he would get really excited and he would say to us kids, “Hey look out the window, people are dying to get in there.” And it would be a cemetery.
Are we dying to get in there? How do we approach death in our own lives? Are we afraid of it? Are we dreading it? Are we excited about it? How do we approach death?
In the scripture passage, Jesus reveals to us that death is something that we can be excited about because when we die, we’ll be planted into the earth, but that is not the end. Like a seed that is buried, it will bring forth new life.
I was with a parishioner the other night in the nursing home. He has terminal cancer; he is dying, and he is in his late 90s, so I went there. Actually, I was with someone else, and his family happened to be in the hallway. I walked up to his bedside, prayed with him and asked if I could anoint him. As I did, he took my hand, grasped my hand, he just pulled me down towards him and he said, “Father, I can’t wait to see His face. I can’t wait to see His face.” He teared up and we were in the room with his children there. I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since. How do we approach death? Are we dying to let that happen so that we can soon see His face?
When I was newly ordained, I had a dream that I was dying and it was probably because I went from maybe going to one or two wakes and funerals in my life, to one or two a week. So, I think that I was thinking about death quite a bit and it came out in my dreams. I remember I was surrounded by my family, and I was given the sense from God the Father that He loved me so much that I could let go and come to Him. From that moment on I have never feared death. It’s actually something that I look forward to because I know that it’s a part of the process to eternal life.
Each and every one of us will at some point in our lives come to that moment of death but as we die, do we die so in faith. Do we die so in love? Do we die so in hope that we see Him face to face?
The Season of Lent is a time for us to meditate upon that. How do we approach death? The interesting thing is that Jesus is revealing something to us here in the scriptures. He reveals to us that there is a glory that comes with it.
One of the three times God the Father speaks is here in this passage, “A voice comes from the heaven, ‘I have glorified it and will glorify it again.’ The crowd was confused, and they said, ‘Has an angel spoken to him.’ And Jesus revealed to them, this voice from heaven is the Father.” He wanted to reveal His glory when Jesus would be raised up, suffer, and die on the cross. That would be a moment of glory. Because at the moment of His death and when He’s raised up and we hear that He will draw everyone to Himself, and that the ruler of this world will be driven out. That Satan will have no more power over this world.
We can live in that freedom right now because He has already suffered, died, and risen. We’re invited to that Paschal Mystery every time we receive the Eucharist into us, we enter into the Passion. We suffer and we die, and we rise, but Jesus says that the death doesn’t have to wait until the moment that we actually die physically.
The death can happen right now. He uses this image of a grain of wheat. He says, “Amen, Amen, I say to you.” Whenever He says Amen, Amen, this is pretty important. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
We can die right now and by that, I mean, we can die to our own will and so unite our wills to the Father in heaven. Yet right now, right here on earth we can live the resurrected life. If we live the resurrected life, He will not only impact us but many will be drawn into this mystery.
Hopefully, by the moment we come to our death and when we are buried in the ground, God the Father can look at us and say, “I have glorified the world through this life.” He wants to glorify this world through each and every one of us. In our Baptism we are united with Jesus. When we receive Him right now, we are united with Him.
This season of Lent is a time of dying so that as we die, we can die in Him and live with Him.
So, this season of Prayer, Fasting and Alms Giving, these are all ways to die to ourselves so that we can live in eternal life.
As we come forward to receive the Eucharist, let that be our prayer, that we can die right now; that we can approach death with that phrase of that thought of “people are dying to get in there,” because if we’re excited about death and we allow ourselves to die now, we can begin to experience eternal life right here on earth.
So may the Eucharist that you receive be the seed of eternal life. Allow us to die right now so that we can experience Heaven on earth.
