5th Sunday of Lent: Dying to Give Life

As we enter into the fifth week of Lent, we draw closer and closer into the heart of the Lenten journey. As we said at the beginning of Lent, the heart of the Lenten journey is the paschal mystery of Jesus. Lent is journeying with Jesus in his passion, death and resurrection. As Jesus said in the gospel today,

Whoever serves me must follow me,
and where I am, there also will my servant be.
The Father will honor whoever serves me (John 12: 26).

In today’s 5th Sunday of Lent, Jesus talks about the approaching hour of his passion and death. Ironically, Jesus sees his passion and death, which he calls the hour, as a glorification. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12: 23). The crucifixion is the moment when Jesus will be lifted up on the cross.

Jesus views his suffering and death always from the viewpoint of his resurrection. During this Lent, we are called by Jesus to see dying, suffering, penance and sacrifices from the perspective of the resurrection of Jesus. It is in this resurrection perspective of suffering and death that Jesus invites us to die with him. He proclaims,

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.
Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life (John 12: 24 – 25).

Jesus likens our lives to a grain of wheat. A single grain of wheat can yield thousands of new grains. But only if it falls into the ground and dies. If it does not die, it remains only a single grain. Like a grain of wheat, therefore, our lives can give life to thousand other lives. But only if we fall to the ground and die to ourselves. If we do not die, we remain a fruitless and insignificant individual.

Once again, Jesus talks about dying here from the perspective of the resurrection. Seen from the perspective of the resurrection, dying means active dying not passive dying. Active dying is intentional rather than submissive. Jesus showed this when he willingly accepted death on the cross. Many confused Jesus’ dying as submissive by reasoning that Jesus silently relented to all the pain and suffering inflicted upon him. Jesus’ suffering and death was not acceding to the oppressive powers that sentenced him to death. On the contrary, Jesus’ suffering and death was a very powerful act of resistance to violence and domination. We can equate Jesus’ dying to Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance which led to the independence of India from British rule.

Active dying is altruistic rather than self-centered. Active dying is not to nourish oneself but is directed to the other, a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Active dying is more ontological, spiritual, psychological if you will, rather than physical. This implies that active dying is dying from the very core of our being. That is why before Jesus died on the cross, we can say that he already died–from the very core of his humanity. This was a very painful process for Jesus as shown in the agony of the garden. There, we saw Jesus profoundly struggling within his humanity but in the end relented to his Father’s will:

“Abba, Father,
for you all things are possible;
remove this cup from me;
yet, not what I want,
but what you want” (Mark 14: 36).

Oftentimes, we emphasize in Lent, especially during Holy Week, the physical and, therefore, gory details of the whipping, crowning with thorns, carrying of the cross, falling and crucifixion of Jesus. We are not helped by gruesome cultural depictions of Jesus’ passion like Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ.” This is also reinforced by our own Good Friday observances like the carrying of wooden crosses, crawling on rough pavement, self-flagellation and the re-enactment of actual crucifixion like the one in San Pedro Cutud, San Fernando, Pampanga. It is in this this context that Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI commented that we tend to misunderstand “the passion of Jesus”. This is not to downplay the brutality of Jesus’ pain but Rollheiser explains that what the evangelists focus on is not the scourging, the whips, the ropes, the nails, and the physical pain. They emphasize rather that, in all of this, Jesus is alone, misunderstood, lonely, isolated, without support, unanimity-minus-one. What’s emphasized is his suffering as a lover; the agony of a heart that’s ultra-sensitive, gentle, loving, understanding, warm, inviting, and hungry to embrace everyone but which instead finds itself misunderstood, alone, isolated, hated, brutalized, facing murder.[1]

Herein also lies the subtle power of the active dying of Jesus. The active dying of Jesus highlighted more the brutality, violence and injustice done to him. Jesus, by actively choosing death, has paradoxically unmasked the oppressive forces that caused his death. Thus, Jesus’ dying became a powerful symbol for the unjust death of millions of the innocent and the poor in history. The brutality of the crucifixion of Jesus despite his innocence is repeated today in the senseless death inflicted upon thousands of innocent people by the powerful, abusive and bullies of this world. We have seen this in our own country through the extra judicial killings of mostly poor people who were not given the opportunity to prove their innocence, the abject poverty and injustice which inflicted slow death to millions of poor people despite the enormous display of wealth in our world today, the killings of activists whose only crime is to stand for human rights, justice and of the defense of poor, the killings of innocent babies inside the womb, the deaths of innocent children from the dengvaxia vaccine. These deaths are senseless, unnecessary and repressive. Therefore, the cross of Jesus stands as a powerful symbol of protest against the killing of the innocent and the wickedness of the powerful who perpetuates the status quo of dominance and oppression.

While Jesus’ death was a non-violent protest against the dying of the innocent, Jesus invites us to a meaningful death–to active dying. Jesus calls us to actively lay down our lives for others: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15: 13). The active dying of Jesus is repeated in history through the martyrs and saints who offered their lives not just for the church but for all humanity, the heroes who sacrificed their lives for their people, and the many nameless people who because of their work for justice, peace, freedom and human rights were unjustly killed, tortured and disappeared.

As we enter more intensely into the Lenten journey, Jesus calls us to actively die to ourselves. What does an active dying entail? It entails immersing more deeply into the paschal mystery of Jesus. It entails following Jesus more intensely in his passion, death and resurrection: “Where I am, there also will my servant be (John 12: 26).” Like Jesus, it entails profound love and humility. Jesus’ intense relationship and love for his Father motivated him to finally accept his cup of death on the cross. Jesus’ great love for the people especially the oppressed and rejects of society led him to the path of the cross. Following Jesus, we can only thread the path of active dying if we will have an intense relationship and great love for his Father and for others especially the weak and downtrodden. We need to become passionate and great lovers for God and humanity.

Furthermore, like Jesus “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God … but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2: 6), we need to have profound humility. As Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies (John 12: 25),” likewise, we need to fall into the ground. The Latin word for ground is humus which is also the root word for humility. Like Jesus we need to humble and die for ourselves so we can serve God and others.

Let me end with a prayer,

Lord Jesus! We call upon your name. Grant us love and humility so we may die and rise up with you. So we may become abundant fields of wheat for others. Amen.

[1]Ron Rolheiser, OMI, The Agony in the Garden – The Special Place of Loneliness, February 22, 2004. Accessed 16/03/18 at http://ronrolheiser.com/the-agony-in-the-garden-the-special-place-of-loneliness/#.WqsieUxuI2w