Coffee With God

Reflection: John 12:24-26

The Church celebrates the feast of Martyr St. Lawrence. Liturgical Feast Days preserve the past for the present and the future. Today’s feast preserves the memory of persecutions under emperor Valerian in August 258 in Rome. The emperor had ordered all the bishops, priests and deacons in Rome to be executed. Pope Sixtus II and six deacons were martyred on August 6. There was only one more deacon left in Rome – It was Lawrence. Legends say that the emperor demanded Lawrence to surrender all the valuables and treasures of the Church to him because the Gospel teaches to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar! Lawrence requested time to collect all the treasures. Three days later, the deacon presented all the blind, lame and sick people who were under his care before the emperor as the valuables and treasures of the Church. The emperor turned furious and ordered him to be burned alive on August 10. For the Feast days of Martyrs, the Church chooses the teaching of Jesus on the grain of wheat that falls and dies to generate life. This is the paradox. People are normally scared of death. But Jesus in the Gospel presents death as the source of abundance of life. How could this be explained? He takes the example from the nature, the example of the grain of wheat. The farmers of his time understood that process very well. A grain of wheat generates new life only when it dies in the soil. Jesus speaks of safeguarding our life for eternal life. “Life in this world” is to be understood as desires of the self and unchecked ego, which are influenced by the values of the world. Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane has taught us by example how to die to the interests of the self. In his moments of agony, the Lord’s prayer to the Father was, “not my will, Father, but let your will be done.” This is the moment of dying to the interests of the self. In the scene of annunciation, Blessed Mother had said a similar prayer: “I am the handmaid of the Lord, Let it be done to me according to your Word.” It was an act of dying to the interests of the self. And when the Lord taught his disciples to pray, he reiterated this act of dying to the self, and we repeat this prayer every time we pray the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” A true Christian community would become a reality only when the self-interest of the individual members dies and is replaced by love. Evangelist John encourages his persecuted community to follow the Lord by giving up the desires of the self in order to discern the will of God.