There are two privileges given to deacons: the ability to preside at Baptisms and wake services. At Baptisms and funerals, the Christ symbol is the large candle which will first be lit Holy Saturday, at the Easter Vigil service. Christ is our light, but He is also our Leader, our King, the One we hail next weekend with songs and palm branches. He goes before us; He shows us the way.
It’s good that He has gone before us, because the way we must all travel is overshadowed by the thought and reality of suffering and death. Jesus said: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Let me share a true story:
On the 15th of February 1597, 26 Christians were crucified at Niz-hiz-aka Hill in Nagasaki, Japan.
Amongst them was a young seventeen-year-old boy, Thomas Kosaki, who had been sentenced to die for his Christian witness – along with his father. He wrote a letter to his mother the evening before his crucifixion. Let me read a translation of it to you:
“Mother, we are supposed to be crucified tomorrow in Nagasaki. Please do not worry about anything because we will be waiting for you to come to heaven. Everything in the world vanishes like a dream. Be sure that you never lose the happiness of heaven. Be patient and show love to many people. Most of all, about my little brothers Mansho and Philipo, please see to it that they are not delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. Mother, I commit you to the Lord.”
I would like to reflect on today’s Gospel, for it focuses – perhaps like no other Gospel passage on the Cross of Jesus – on an event we remember and give thanks for on Good Friday.
The Gospel opens with Greeks who come to see Jesus. And for the first time we get a glimpse of Jesus’ mission widening from “The lost sheep of Israel” to “all people” in today’s Gospel. For Jesus’ Gospel is for both Jew and Greek – also for each of us!
It reminds us that the salvation Jesus offers is offered to those in the Church and those outside. And if Jesus had a heart for those outside the Church – then we must have a heart for them too – if we want to truly be his disciples. The way of greatness is in service and humility and sacrifice.
There is however a cost to the coming of the Kingdom of God. Jesus summed it up when he said, using an agrarian analogy: “I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
His point is that just as the single kernel of wheat has to die before the useful fruit – the grain can be harvested, so Jesus had to die on the Cross before the Kingdom of God could be made accessible to mankind. Or put another way, the Church was birthed through the Cross of Jesus.
But there is also a personal cost to us if we are to be part of God’s Kingdom – reflected in Jesus’ own words: “The person who loves their life loses it, and the person who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”
There was a real cost, too, to the first disciples. The Early Church was mercilessly persecuted by the Roman State in the first two centuries with many martyrdoms. A recent example was Jim Elliot, an American Christian missionary, one of five people killed in 1956 during an attempt to evangelize the Huaorani people of Ecuador. He expressed the matter clearly and concisely: “He is no fool, who gives up that which he cannot keep to, gain that which he cannot lose.”
Jesus struggled in the face of death. Even though Jesus was perfectly obedient to the will of God, he also struggled with the difficulty of what was coming. And this should give us a tremendous amount of comfort.
There is room in the Christian journey for struggle. There is room for our weakness. There is room for us to wish that our roads would not need to be so difficult.
There is room for struggle in the Christian life, and in the cross. Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Take comfort knowing that Jesus is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. There is room for our struggle.
Today, Jesus asks us the question: Are we willing to be disciples with the cost of giving up our selfish desires?
–Dcn. Terry Murphy