Learning how to die

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (John 12: 24-26) gives us a teaching of Jesus that is utterly central not only to the means by which He offered us redemption but also to the processes by which we, His followers, are incorporated into Him. There can be few passages in the gospel which are more clearly an antidote to everything in us that continues to scream for the survival of the old man of sin within us.

We must understand that evil always copies good, and that the devil is ever the ape of God, as St Jerome says. On the one side stands the old man crucified with Christ that St Paul refers to in the letter to the Romans. On the other stands the ideal to which Jesus calls us, to follow Him as the disciples should follow the Master, for where the Master is there must the disciple be also.

Here is the drama for us. On the one hand, we must not smother the smouldering flax nor break the bruised reed. Weakness must be nurtured, not punished. At the same time, there is every temptation in the world, as Jeremiah says, to put cushions under the elbows of sinners … and, by the way, that means every single one of us. All humans have a taste for the holiday from good. If we are disciples, we struggle not to have a taste for the holiday from doing the better thing.

So, should we always do the better thing, and crucify our old man mercilessly? Not at all; the best and the better may be the enemy of the good. That way madness lies. Worse still, that way lack of integration between our better and our worse selves may take a hold at a deeper level, allowing us to believe in our performances of piety, while failing to back them up with actions that bespeak love truly.  

But the temptation for those who are committed disciples, willing perhaps to die for Him, is to mistake worldliness for moderation, to confuse the inner disgust which can coat our spiritual senses with the inevitable fatigue and weariness of our many duties. We claim to be tired, and maybe we are, but sometimes we are actually looking for Jeremiah’s cushions; we are turning inward; we are seeking not rest but anaesthesia. 

Jesus’ answer: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. St Therese of Lisieux showed us how littleness can embrace this utterly stark doctrine with fruitful abundance. We do not need grandiose gestures here, announcing our sacrifices to the world; we just need a little path through the thorns of our complaining nature, reaching for the flowers of His grace and the fruits of His redemption.  

If anyone serves me, He must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be. Any big mouth can clamour for Christ when they feel pumped up; the challenge is to know how to die when nothing within us can find a reason for it, or when everything in us calls for us to be taken down from the Cross before the sacrifice is accomplished.