-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm and 9:30am
If you're not changing you're dying!
That title could be turned around by today's Gospel, "if you're not dying, you're not converting". The preaching this weekend is going to be focused upon an adage that I read that said "before you die you better die so that when you die you won't die".
If the grain of wheat remains just a grain of wheat and does not die it does not fulfill its purpose, it's mission, or goal. The same can you say about the disciple of Jesus. By giving oneself away in love we accomplish the dying of Jesus that we see in baptism. The death and resuscitation of Lazarus is A great image for all of us to do this "preliminary" dying or necessary dying while we are still living so that we might come to the fullness of life in Christ in spite of death.
This "dying" is what is at the heart of the Paschal mystery, the Easter mystery, the font of baptism, the holy Eucharist, and discipleship in general. We must acknowledge the existence of the false self and the need for its ongoing and continuous death, in this way we will make room for our new life in Christ begun in baptism fulfilled in confirmation, deepened in the Holy Eucharist, and experienced/expressed most perfectly in self-sacrificing love of discipleship. We call it communion.
So are you dying? Or are you living a defensive, strategic,'s false self protective death?
Let me know how this figures into your call to discipleship
5 comments:
Living a life to self is nothing more than undergoing a long, slow, painful death. In order to really find serenity and true freedom I must commit daily to a life for others; to surrender my life in order to live a true life in this world, with the joyful hope of an even better life in the next. We no longer fear physical death. This is what I think Jesus meant when he said he who believes in me, even though he die, will live; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
I think clarification would be helpful. I asked my husband what he thought the false self was & he was murky on defining, unsure of his response. So if you start with what is True Self then what is False Self it would not go over people's heads.
"By giving oneself away in love".
It wasn't until I died with Christ very deeply for someone by giving myself away for that person, did I know how sweet dying each day for love could be. And this love for this one, in turn became my very discipleship, my very ministry with Christ for the Kingdom.
As it says in Scripture: "But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings", I believe that can be extended to love. Love one as deeply as you share in Christ's dying for one. The depth has no limit.
This ties in well with a homily or two that you gave at the beginning of Lent - I think - that in order to make room for the newness in life, we have to let go of some of the "things" on which we have such a tight grip. Letting go – changing – dying ... none of them are pleasant in and of themselves; but the Paschal Mystery teaches us that it is all necessary in order to grow. It takes faith to willingly embrace the dying - and hope helps us go though it with eyes open. Meanwhile, love not only endures but continues to blossom. I think that evidence of this is most readily seen with the death of a loved one. Even with my mother gone for so many years - it seems to me that my love for her continues to grow and presents itself in varied ways. I treasure her more, and I see her in more ways than I ever did before. So, faith - hope - and love...but the greatest of these is love.
Very helpful comments. Thanks.
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