Fifth Sunday Of Lent, Year B--I Tried But It Died: Grain Of Wheat

Wheat is associated with being sewn in the ground, buried, geminating and then springing up for bread to feed multitudes. These are all symbols of Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, and communion with his Body, the Church with Jesus, saved in his Sacrifice at Calvary.

The seed has to be buried first—a seed can exist for a long time without being buried. They have found seeds in the tombs of the Pharaohs, and in 2005, a 1,900-year-old date palm seed found at a historical site near the Dead Sea in Israel was geminated.1

Dying to self is the seed dying.

E.g. A friend's husband ordered a monogrammed cup with the initials DTS on it. It stands for “Die to Self” from 1 Cor. 15:31 where St. Paul says, “I die daily.’2

They tried to bury us but they did not know we were seeds.

E.g. when you are forgotten or neglected and you don’t hurt with the insult, but your heart is happy—that is dying to self.

When you lovingly and patiently bear disorder, irregularity, tardiness, and annoyance...and endure it as Jesus endured it—that is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works, or itch for praise after an accomplishment, when you can truly love to be unknown... that is dying to self.

When you can see your brother or sister prosper and can honestly rejoice with him, and feel no envy even though your needs are greater—that is dying to self.

When you can take correction, when you can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, with no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart—that is dying to self.3

After the fall, marriage helps to overcome self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving. Catechism 1609

Do you, Gardener, take this shared garden, of your lives, to weed together from this day forth? A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.

E.g. in a Team Ministry of Husband and Wife, the couple shares- “We make an active choice to trust the Holy Spirit and His ministry through our spouse. We never correct one another publicly—we discuss and debate when we are alone. Most of the disagreements we’ve had had been due to a lack of communion or assuming the other meant something they did not. Ministering as a team requires getting over all petty jealousies, all competition with one another and dying to self.”4

Dying upward is a Catholic idea of responding in surrender to resist temptations. The embracing of higher things always implies death to the lower form of life. It means dying upward of ourselves. We could never pass from this lower plane to the higher. The ability to do this was given us and baptism, when the seed of the incarnate life was sewn in our nature, then was given us the power to overcome our weakness to do things by which our own nature we could not do Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, which can be accomplished only in the soul which has surrendered its whole being to this divine energizing influence.5

After germination, the plant springs up to new life—which is different than the original seed. It takes some care. There is a whimsical garden plaque that has an etching of withered plant that says, “I tried but it died.”

Or, how about, “I Tried until I Almost Died,” which is about surrendering to leave behind our burden of anxiety and fear to experience the freedom of trusting solely in the perfecting power of God’s grace.6

In a culture that emphasizes accomplishment and ever-higher goals, we feel driven to do more, achieve more, be more. And we get caught up in the unforgiving treadmill of self-imposed rules, believing that we should, we need to, and we must.

Be gentle in your cooperation with God’s grace. Shh…germination in progress

Jesus uses a double Amen which means “I solemnly assure you.” To say the seed must die for abundant life to result.

In our day, the general thrust of psychology is towards self-development, growth as a person. This seems directly to contradict the teaching on the death of the wheat-grain.

The death of the grain occurs in union with Christ’s death. This involves a progressive purification of the heart, the gaining of inner peace and composure, a standing away from all that one is impelled to think of as one’s own, the patient expectation of God’s intervention despite darkness and dryness.

Mental mechanisms defend the ego against the pain of facing reality: they are processes of perceiving, reasoning, judging and acting that serve to bolster the crumbling ego. We cannot but be aware of the problems of relationship, affectivity, values and action in which we are immersed, though we may be quite unaware of the full extent and depth of our conflicts; and the ego cries out for protection. And hence the flight from reality. But the flight from reality, and particularly from the truth about myself, is a prime obstacle to personal development even in naturalistic terms. It is infantile to imagine that we are immune from the effects of our evasions, protections, compensations, compromises and escapes. To imagine that personal development is achieved by blind trust in our instinctive drives is itself a form of escape. But if the refusal of self-encounter will tend to plunge me into ever deeper self-deception, personal development is not automatically produced by merely admitting what I am.