Dying to Ourselves for Others

Homily: Fifth Sunday of Lent (B)

John 12:20-33

21 March 2021

Fr. Ricky C. Montanez 

Eula is a mom with 2 young kids and a third on the way. Due to the pandemic she has had to live where she works 15 days each month. That’s 15 days where she cannot care for her children. Noel’s income was sufficient for his stay at home wife and their kids. When the health crisis happened he had to take a huge pay cut at work. His wife had to take on “sidelines” to augment the family income while also attending to the children. Giovanni can barely take time off since the reduction of personnel requires him to work longer hours. He was unable to spend Christmas and New Year with his family and he had to miss the birthdays of his loved ones in 2020 because he was on duty. These are stories of real people who have been living a life of sacrifice in the past year. They are members of Christ the King’s parish staff.  Although I’ve shared with you just 3 stories, all of them have personal struggles intensified by this pandemic year.  They’ve all had to adjust their personal comforts and put on hold life goals so they may continue their work of ensuring all of us have a safe place to worship God and receive the sacraments. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus talks about the supreme sacrifice He must make in order to restore us to the right and most fitting relationship with God. He describes His self-offering through the metaphor of the grain of wheat that dies so as to bring forth much fruit. Just like the grain of wheat that needs to be buried in the earth to produce new wheat in abundance, Jesus will offer his life as a ransom for many.

The prospect of suffering and dying was not easy for Jesus. It is his humanity that prods Jesus to disclose… “I am troubled now.” Making sacrifices did not come any easier to Him than it does to us. He felt pain and discomfort and fatigue the same way we do. This struggle of Jesus is very much evident in His agony in the Garden  where He prays: “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” What makes Jesus different was His total willingness to undergo all that suffering for love of humankind and in fulfillment of His Father’s plan. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that although Jesus was Son, “he learned obedience from what He suffered”, and as a result, “He was made perfect and became the source of eternal salvation for all.” 

Similarly we, too have “to die” to ourselves in order to become followers of Jesus and be a source of life for others. Put differently, we must lose our life in order to find it. This is to say that our life as Christians is not without a cost. Our human instinct would always tell us to avoid death and to cling to life…. to prefer self-preservation over self-sacrifice. But Jesus teaches us that to become His faithful followers we should not hesitate to hand over our life in the service of others, by putting other’s needs before our own, and by becoming more and more other-centered individuals. St. Ignatius of Loyola describes it best as being a “Man (or woman) for others”. St Joseph, whose solemnity we just celebrated last Friday had many experiences of “dying to himself” in loving service of God and others. He took the pregnant Mary as his wife despite the gossip of their community; he led his family safely on lengthy journeys on the basis of divine instructions received in his dreams; he struggled to make a living in a foreign land (Egypt) to provide his young wife and a baby that was not his own but merely entrusted to his care. He does not run away like Jonah.  He doesn’t throw in the towel when things didn’t immediately make sense or the task was daunting.  He did what was necessary, motivated by his trust in God and his love for Mary and Jesus.  The Christian life is a process of growing into dying and rising. When we make our choice to say “yes” to Jesus, we are telling the world that  we want to be better versions of ourselves even if it means having to suffer difficulty, swallow our pride, and be subject to humiliation. 

For over a year already, we all have been compelled to make sacrifices because of the global health crisis. We’ve all had to give up something we value for the sake of others. Our medical frontliners have had to give up being in the safety of their homes with their family so they could care for the sick in the hospitals and emergency rooms. Others make sacrifices so they could make substantial donations to the needy. And there are those who have sacrificed their own comforts to be able to earn a living for their family.  The fact that we must bear the discomfort of wearing masks and face shields, douse ourselves with disinfectants and distance ourselves from relatives and friends we have grown accustomed to hugging and “beso-beso” —those are sacrifices not only to ensure we don’t get the virus but to protect others from an inadvertent spread of the virus. The struggle is far from over as 8,000 new cases were recorded yesterday (the highest we’ve had in a day since the lockdown) and is predicted to increase to 11,000 by the end of the month. The surge may be (I’m not saying it’s the only reason!) due to those among us who have had a bad case of “pandemic fatigue” and have been less willing to make these personal sacrifices and have been remiss in the proper use of masks, shields, and disinfectants, and who believe it safe to gather again with friends and family. We badly need a more immediate, decisive and proactive response to our present predicament. This is an urgent call for everyone from our leaders down to every Filipino to always bear in mind the common good, even if it means having to step down from positions of responsibility and handing over the reins to those more capable and willing.

 
Suffering is part of the human existence. Jesus felt it because he was human. It is however by his divinity that he elevates such painful experiences into moments of sanctification and doors for transformation. If you think of what Jesus suffered for us, our own sacrifices pale in comparison. 

Through our acts of serving others, of dying to ourselves for the good of others, Jesus allows us to transcend the limits of our individual existence. As we persevere with courage and hope and remain grounded in faith as we follow   Christ, we must trust that our road does not  end in tragedy at Calvary but in His love and mercy, Jesus also leads us on the road to glory — a life filled with the wonders, riches and marvels of our loving and merciful God!