The saints called it dying to ourselves. So that each time we celebrate the sacraments, each time we fall to our knees in prayer, like that grain of wheat we are asked if we are willing to die to that which prevents us from God in order to let God live more fully within us.
While we may not see it that way, we are being asked to embrace a Cross, so that we can be prepared to accept the larger crosses God allows us in all of our lives. Because, everyone here has been given a Cross, whether large or small, it is our Cross and, just as it did for Jesus, it can weigh us down, it can knock us down, so that like a grain of wheat we, too, fall to the ground.
Yet, the Cross is not always something we ask Jesus for help with, because when we ask for help a little piece of us literally dies. The Cross is seen as a stumbling block in our lives instead of an instrument to holiness, it becomes a heavy weight instead of a burden that only Christ can bear.
Years ago when I was in seminary, during the summer I had to attend the Institute for Priestly Formation, which consisted of talks, classes and different means of formation.
Yet, I will never forget a class I had with a deacon who spoke about the Cross, its challenges and its weight, and he said something that haunts me to this day. He said, in everyone’s life there comes a point when the Cross seems to get too hard to handle, so much so, in fact, that we are forced to cry out: “God you’re killing me,” but that is not what haunted me, it was the reply He said that God gives, when God says: “I know.”
Our Cross is not ours, it never was, it is Christ’s, we only share what He owns, we only partake in His same sufferings, which is why He can bear our burden. By the Cross we die to ourselves and our lives become a perfect imitation of Him, because truly it is at the foot of the cross that our lives are no longer our own.
What Jesus is asking is not easy, but if His words were not enough, His actions made it all the more apparent, our lives demand sacrifice, and we cannot live solely for ourselves, we cannot live unless, like that grain of wheat, we die to ourselves.
That is the meaning of those words from Jesus: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” Because, without denying ourselves we run from the cross, we run from difficulties, we run from anything God desires of us, because we will not see life we will only see death, we will see a cross whose shadow looms, we will see a life of fear because of the transformation God wants for all of us.
Even Jesus was tempted to run, to give up: “I am troubled now,” He says but instead of running, instead of refusing, He embraced the Cross, let it fall upon His shoulders, let it knock Him down and let Himself be hung upon it.
On a personal note, I don’t think I would be standing before you today if it weren’t for my own Cross, because I have now had a combined total of 8 surgeries, two of which were open-heart, with the possibility of facing another and 6 of which were for a pacemaker and the majority of which were done at your age. On top of that, as I was recovering from my second open-heart, my father was killed; yet, it was those heavy burdens that drew me, literally, to the foot of the Cross, (a different story for a different day) and where I found my vocation to the priesthood.
Jesus has shown us the way of the Cross, that though not easy, not even for Him, the Cross becomes more than just pain, more than just self-denial, more than falling to the ground, the Cross becomes the true banner of victory, so that the same instrument of death has become a symbol of life and that raised from the earth He brings all of us to Himself.
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