Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

In the 1950s and ’60s, when China invaded the tiny mountain nation of Tibet, the Communists imprisoned many monks, nuns, and Buddhist faithful. Some were imprisoned in labor camps for twenty or thirty years or more.

One monk had been imprisoned for twenty-five years. He had been tortured and treated badly, and his body was pretty much a wreck, but not his mind.

When you looked into his eyes, far from seeing bitterness, brokenness, or hatred in them, you could see that they were glowing. He looked as though he had just spent twenty-five years on retreat. All he talked about was his gratitude to the Chinese. He said that they had helped him develop an overwhelming love and compassion towards those who would cause him harm.

The old monk explained that his imprisonment forced him to draw on his inner strength. In such circumstances, either you go under or you rise above the hatred and pain. When he emerged from prison, the old monk felt nothing but love and understanding toward his captors. He had learned the deeper meaning of his religion and came to understand humanity’s profound connections to one another in and with God.

The monk explained that without his captors, his words of faith would have been nothing but mouthing platitudes. He needed the challenging experience he endured for so long for the words of faith to take root in his heart, to be living words with deep meaning.

To transform our lives in order to become the people that we were meant to be begins by “dying” to those ambitions, prejudices and fears we cling to: What values, what gifts, what purposes are we willing to center our lives upon in order to make them what we pray they will be? What are we willing to let “die” in our lives in order that what we seek in the depths of our hearts might “live” might grow and blossom? What must we put aside and bury in order that the justice and peace of God may be established here and now?

Christ gave His life on the tree of the Cross in order that new life might come forth; His death gave rise to a new heart and spirit for humanity. The Gospel of the grain of wheat is Christ’s assurance to us of the great things we can do and the powerful works we can accomplish by dying to self and rising to the love and compassion of Jesus, the Servant Redeemer.+