John
12: 23 - 34
And Jesus answered
them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
*
When
we are conceived, God puts a little piece of himself inside us. That little
piece of God is our immortal soul; it is the essence of who we are, and the
seed of what we will become — it is our true Self.
God
places that soul into our human body. In order to navigate this body through
life, we develop an ego. The ego gives us our sense of personal identity and
relationship to others. It would be impossible to get through life without one.
But where our soul is eternal, our ego is temporary. And it can be an obstacle
to our soul’s development if we take it too seriously.
Jesus
warns us against this in the above Gospel when he says, “Unless a grain of
wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it
dies, it bears much fruit.” The grain of wheat is our human ego. For our
souls to produce real fruit for God, our egos have to figuratively fall to the
ground.
During
his lifetime and through the Gospel, Jesus calls us to produce much fruit; to
open our hearts with love and forgivingness to all those around us; to cherish
and nurture the loved ones in our lives; to trust in God’s love for us and to
surrender ourselves to that love without fretting about the past or having
anxiety about the future.
How
often have we allowed our egos to close our hearts, and shut out a friend or relative
who may have offended us, or not measured up to our moral standards? How often
have we allowed our egos to waste precious time and energies in the pursuit of
false gods ─ like wealth, power, status and perfection ─ while our loved ones
go wanting for our time and attention? How often have we allowed our egos to
drag us into the quicksand of anxiety while the precious hours that God has
given us slip away?
Today
is a very good day for us to let our egos fall to the ground. It is a day for
us to unlock our hearts, to banish anger from our lives, and to reach out to
those we have shut out. It is a day for us to reassess our priorities, and to
redirect our time and our energies to our loved ones before it is too late. It
is a day for us to take Jesus’ hand and let him lift us up from anxiety.
Today
is an excellent day for our souls to produce much fruit for God.
……………………………………………………………………………………..
Readers
of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on
Amazon.com:
Just
to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life
Synchronicity
as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and
Pastoral Ministry
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