 |
| Photo by Juan Guajardo/NTC |
Diocese of Fort Worth
St. Matthew Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas
May 18, 2019
Acts 6:1-7b
Psalm 34
1 Peter 4:7b-11
John 12:24-26
“Amen, amen, I say to you, 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. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.” These words spoken by Jesus in today’s Gospel reading taken from John are striking because at first hearing they seem to be so unreasonable. How can one hate one’s life if life is a gift from God? How can one hate one’s life if life in itself is such a great and necessary good to enjoy other good blessings given to us by God? Without life, there are no other gifts worth cherishing.
Perhaps there can be a sense of reason introduced to this phrase if we accept a Scripture scholar’s insight that “to hate” is a figure of speech common in the Semitic languages of Jesus’ time to indicate that what Jesus really means is that one must love one’s own need for survival less than the call to follow, to serve and to be with Jesus. Yet, does this commentary on the language of Scripture really suffice for the radical message conveyed and revealed fully by Jesus Christ? It’s a reasonable explanation but in itself it is only a commentary that falls short in conveying the full message of the Good News of Salvation that unreasonably involves dying.
The radical and life-changing message of Jesus Christ is that like a grain of wheat, a person extends oneself beyond the limits of survival or simple human existence in this world only by willing to not live from the vantage point of self-preservation. One’s reference point is no longer the survival of oneself, but rather the person of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. The reference is not simply a perspective or a positive way of looking at things. It’s not simply making lemonade when life gives you lemons. That is too trite and reasonable.
The truth that is revealed is more clearly manifested in the call of the first deacons about which we have heard in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostles have called these Greek-speaking men to address the particular needs of the Greek-speaking widows and orphans — people most prone to exclusion and annihilation. Without attention to these needs, these widows and orphans will die in abandonment and isolation. The Apostles have called and appointed these deacons not so that the Apostles might remain aloof from the needs of the poor but rather that they might be more intentionally reminded of their presence and needs. While there are seven names given in this reading from Acts, only two of them have their deeds further revealed in Sacred Scripture: Philip and Stephen.
Philip witnesses to Christ’s love in his ministry in such a manner that he serves as an instrument in the conversion of Simon Magus and of the Ethiopian eunuch, both of who are brought into the Church through the generative waters of baptism. Philip loves the widows and orphans to whom he has been sent to serve. He cares for them and this love attracts the hearts of Simon Magus and the Ethiopian eunuch to the truth much more than any detailed argument or syllogism.
Stephen witnesses to Christ in his ministry in such a way that he dies a martyr’s death that is richly configured to the Crucifixion of Jesus. Stephen’s death is not simply like Jesus’ death in that both of them are violent murders; Stephen’s death is not like Jesus’ death in that similar words are spoken; Stephen’s death is configured to Jesus’ death because of love. Jesus enables Stephen to love sacrificially as Jesus’ loves sacrificially. It is a love that is so selfless as to surpass the strong emotional affection of friendship. It is a love that is so selfless as to surpass the cohesive and natural bonds of family life. It is a love that lays down one’s life for one’s friends as Jesus does. It is the love that does not calculate the cost. It is the love of the Cross that offers authentic and lasting freedom. It is this love’s sacrificial and liberating character that brings about the conversion of Paul who witnesses Stephen’s martyrdom and turns Paul from hatred and fear to love. Paul will himself heroically witness to Jesus with his own sacrificial martyr’s love that bears much fruit in the conversion of the gentiles. The reference point that makes one hate this life is love — love is greater than life because without love, life merely becomes a struggle to forestall death. Without the selflessness of love, what is reasonable is simply what involves calculation and tactics of survival that only delay the inevitable fate.
It is important to note that the instrument of Paul’s conversion was the sacrificial witness and love of the deacon Stephen — whose own martyrdom was prepared by his daily ministry of charity to those most wounded by sin and its effects — the widows and orphans who did not belong to the dominant language group or culture but whom Stephen loved and cared for. Stephen’s faithful love for Jesus present in the widows and orphans fostered in him a desire to give of himself even more to the point of laying down his life in martyrdom for the truth. When Paul was knocked off his horse and blinded, he heard the voice of Christ speak to him and Paul was able to recognize this voice because he had previously heard the voice speaking through Stephen.
Your ordination today to the diaconate is not simply transitional in the sense that it is only a step to priesthood. It is transitional in the life of the Church because it fosters in you, and in those to whom you witness, a conversion to the same love possessed by Philip, Stephen, and the other deacons to love Christ in the excluded and dispossessed people of the world. It fosters in you this love that prepares you to make the transition for an ever more demanding gift of yourself in laying down your life for your friends, as Christ continues to do through each of our lives and ministries. Through the ordered life provided to you and to the Church in your promises of chaste celibacy and obedience to me and to my successors the love of Christ will grow in you and through your sacramental witness in others. “Unless a grain of wheat should fall upon the ground and die, it remains but a single grain.”
To die in order to live? It seems so unreasonable and extreme. Dear brother priests and seminarians, how many times have we had our sanity called into question even at times by those who want to love us and to protect us. "Celibacy? Today? Be reasonable. Obedience to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? Don’t you read the papers? Have you lost your mind? Yes, serve God, admire Jesus, do what He teaches, but within reason." Where have we heard such counsel before?
Pontius Pilate comes to mind. On Good Friday — the day of sacrificial love, the day when the Grain of Wheat dies and gives the eternal and universal fruit of love itself — Pilate places before the people two figures for them to choose between: Jesus and Barabbas. From a bystander’s casual perspective Jesus and Barabbas are very similar, each challenged the status quo. The name Barabbas means “son of the father” — Bar Abba. Jesus addressed God as “Abba,” “Father.” In a sense, Pilate places Barabbas next to Jesus as an option for the type of Messiah that the people can reasonably choose for themselves.
There is Barabbas, a Messiah who is a violent and dynamic revolutionary who conspires and wages war against the authority of an oppressive regime and thereby brings about anarchy and excitement. Barabbas promises them the intoxicating freedom to do whatever one would want to do. Barabbas offers them an earthly kingdom of one’s own prosperity and survival. Barabbas is a most reasonable choice. Next to Barabbas, Pilate places Jesus.
In Jesus they have a Messiah who proclaims unreasonably that losing oneself is the way to life. It is Jesus who is the Messiah who hides nothing and is the Light of the World. It is Jesus who is the Messiah who calls them to obedience to the will of the Father and who first lives that obedience. It is Jesus who is the Messiah of the Cross. It is Jesus who is love itself.
The prince of this world is a liar. He knows the truth well enough to hate it. He is cunning and not so blatant as to advertise openly that we should worship the devil. He only suggests that we should decide on what is reasonable; opt for the advantages of a planned and thoroughly organized world with impeccable communication. Calculate a world in which there is room for God in an individual’s life as a private concern but not a place for God to interfere in one’s essential and primary purposes. Offer God a place in your life, but do not discern where you fit in His plan. It is much more reasonable not to be inconvenienced by the Son of Mary, the Nazarene known as a carpenter, who asks so much of us in offering His life fully in sacrificial love. Any false religion subtly attempts to hide the Cross from view, or at least to make it reasonable only as a form of decoration but to remove its sacrificial character as the entrance of the Divine love into the world of humanity.
Your diaconal ministry is therefore a ministry of charity. It is a ministry of selflessness and sacrifice. It is unreasonable that you should waste your life on people who account for nothing and who can offer you no influence nor success. It is unreasonable to live in such a way because life is short, and our demise is inevitable. It is as unreasonable as the love of Philip and Stephen; it is as unreasonable as the love of Peter and Paul; it is as unreasonable as the loving obedience of Jesus to the will of His Father who ransoms a slave by sacrificing His Son.
