Jesus said to his disciples, "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."
The Word in other words
Growing up, we used to watch farmers planting rice in the field. They first buried the seeds in separate rice beds; then when the seedlings sprouted, they planted them into the soggy rice fields. It was no fun. In fact, a song immortalized the hard work: "Planting rice is never fun; bent from morn til the set of sun;cannot stand, cannot sit; cannot rest for a little bit..." But come harvest time, our parents would give us the hand-sickles and hat; and off we went to the harvest fields. We saw that what was once only a sack full of seedlings buried into the soil had produced grains a hundred fold and more!
Jesus says: "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" (John 12:24). In this amazing paradox, Jesus teaches that only by death comes life! The grains were hopelessly alone, ineffective and fruitless, until they were thrown into the earth and buried there as in a tomb- to die, but later to resurrect and bear fruits aplenty!
This has deep meaning in our Christian life today. Tertullian, an early Church writer, had this maxim: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." It was by the death of martyrs that the nascent Church grew up rapidly to change the pagan Roman Empire. As students in the seminary we read the "Roman Martyrology," a book that chronicled the lives of the first witnesses (=martyrs, in Greek), how they lived, who tortured and executed them.
John Allen, a former Vatican correspondent, writes: "We're living now in the greatest era of persecution in Christian history. More Christians died for the faith in this century than in the previous nineteen centuries of Christian history combined." He also relates about the martyrs in Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, and North Korea, e.g. how pastors and elders were crushed to death by a bulldozer in front of their church.
Today, more than ever, we are called to give witness like "wheat that falls on the ground and dies." Lord, if that time ever comes to me, be by my side!
- Fr. Dom Flores, SVD (Sydney, Australia)
