by Fr. Brian Wirth,
Director of Rural Life
I pray everyone’s Lent is off to a blessed start and that we’re blessedly miserable together.
Everything for Jesus. Empty us; Fill us; Use us.
Like rural living, while sacrifice is experienced daily, the physical and spiritual fruits borne are worth the sufferings in the end. Living out faith on the farm reminds us constantly: Control the things you can control and let God take care of the rest.
During this difficult yet grace-filled season of penance and conversion, I often reflect on Jesus’ words: “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)
Equally brothers and sisters, every Lent offers us another graced opportunity to more faithfully and intentionally live our lives as a grain of wheat in union with Christ the Eternal Sower.
Like Christ, all of us have been created and intended to fall to the ground and die, producing much fruit, “fruit that will remain” (Jn. 15:16) through the Eucharist, the Cross as “Tree of Life,” and the Resurrection.
Jesus and the Eleven lived their lives as grains of wheat which fell to the ground and died via martyrdom. Judas, however, in his acts of betrayal and despair, remained “just a grain of wheat.”
Thus, not only during the Lenten Season, but every day through God’s grace we must strive to remain always vigilant in view of the Enemy and the weeds of destruction he seeks to sow into the soil of our hearts.
Certainly, a key question to ask ourselves regularly during Lent is: How am I going to stay vigilant, humbly allowing myself through grace to intentionally become a grain of wheat that falls to the ground in order to produce much fruit?
A powerful way is to recall often our reception of Baptism. One thing I look forward to at the end of Lent every year is at the Easter liturgy when we as a Church renew our baptismal promises. In the first three questions, the priest asks the laity:
Do you renounce Satan?
And all his works?
And all his empty promises?
These questions aren’t meant to be answered on the spot without any previous thought or reflection. On the contrary, these questions should be firmly planted and rooted in the center of our minds throughout Lent and beyond.
A more regular and personal reflection of our baptismal promises will further cultivate our spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as opposed to exercising these disciplines simply for the sake of it, or suffering for the sake of suffering.
Moreover, such reflection will better enable us to overcome any/all temptation in body and spirit by uniting ourselves ever more firmly to Christ and his eternal Victory as a “grain of wheat which falls to the ground and dies, producing much fruit.”
By constantly renouncing Satan, his works, and his empty promises in Lent, by grace we are empowered to walk alongside Christ in solidarity within the desert, strengthened to withstand the three-fold temptation of Satan: lust for bodily desire, greed, and pride. Further, we will be empowered to walk the Via Dolorosa with Jesus and our Cross by His Blood and Water.
This reality is powerfully expressed on Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” After blessing the ashes with holy water, it recalls Genesis and the Second Creation account.
While the author begins the Second Creation account by stating: “There was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted, for the Lord God had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the ground…” (Gen. 2:5)
He states immediately after: “But a stream was welling up out of the earth and watering all the surface of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:6)
The ashes you and I wore brothers and sisters have been created and wonderfully sprinkled by the living stream of Christ from the beginning.
Therefore, becoming ourselves a living being like Adam, may we this Lent be forever united to Christ, the New Adam as “grains of wheat which fall to the ground and die, producing much fruit.”
Through the Paschal merits of Christ, together may we reap the eternal fruit of the Resurrection.
