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Life,
Death, and Walnuts
Fr.
George Smiga
April
2, 2006
John
12:20-33
Jesus
is trying to do a difficult thing in today's gospel. He is
trying to promote a positive dimension to death. Jesus describes
his own death as his moment of glory, as the time when he
will draw all people to himself. But it is difficult for us
to hear, to take in this positive dimension of death, because
when we think of death, our first response is fear. In fact,
most of us spend our lives in denial over the inevitability
of death. Think about it. When we hear of someone we know
who has passed away, don't we ask, “How old was that person?”
Consciously or unconsciously that question is a way of measuring
our own fate. If the person is much older than us we breathe
a sigh of relief. There is still time. It is not yet my turn.
But if that person is our age or younger, we feel tense. Such
a realization breaks through the denial and reminds us that
death is a reality. It will come to us as well.
Now
Jesus knows the danger of living in denial about death. He
knows there can be a positive way to experience death, but
only if we begin to prepare for death today. We cannot prepare
for something we are trying to avoid. We cannot prepare for
something that we are denying is an inevitable part of our
future. So how can we prepare for death? Jesus gives us a
direction through the image in today's gospel. “Unless the
grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just
a single grain. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Now
how does this image apply to us? The next line explains: If
we let go of our lives, we can keep our lives to life eternal.
To put this in other words, the only things that we will be
able to hold in our hands at the moment of our death are those
things that we have given away.
A
man in his eighties realizing that death was near developed
a strong desire to return to the place where he grew up. It
was a primitive cabin in the back woods of Georgia . He had
not been to the place in over seventy years, and by now it
had long been abandoned. As he approached the cabin he was
impressed by the large row of walnut trees that lined the
pathway. He then remembered that shortly before he left this
place as a child, he took a bag of walnuts and planted them
along the side of this path. Over the years they had grown
up and now they were flourishing. He also remembered that
as a child he had decided to take a handful of those walnuts
from that bag to keep for himself to eat. He had hid them
in a niche in the attic. He wondered if they were still there,
so he searched the now abandoned attic. He found them. They
were covered with decades of dust and were completely dried
up. It struck the man that these walnuts provided helpful
parallel to his own life. The things he had let go of, the
things that he had planted, would live on and continue to
flourish long after he had died. The things that he had tried
to keep for himself, were dead already.
You
and I prepare for a positive death each time that we plant
some of our time, some of our energy, some of our wisdom in
the lives of other people. Parents should realize this. The
time you spend with your children, telling them stories, teaching
them simple things, passing on your values, that time and
effort will continue to live on long after you're gone. Just
last week, as I was tying my shoes, I remembered the hours
that my father spent teaching how to tie my shoes before I
went to kindergarten. I was not good at it. For days he kept
showing me how to make the loop and tie the knot. My father
has been dead now nine years and each day I still use that
simple action which he taught me. The knowledge and wisdom
we pass on to our children, to our friends, to our co-workers,
will continue to enlighten others for years to come. The broken
relationships that we heal will start a trajectory of love
and peace which will be passed on from person to person, from
generation to generation. Generosity is never wasted. The
things we give away are larger than us and they continue to
live and flourish long after we are gone.
Now
of course, as Christians we believe that after death we will
have eternal joy with Christ in heaven. But that good news
does not in itself dispel the fear of dying. What can give
us comfort and peace is to realize that we have lived well.
At our moment of death, we will not find comfort in the things
that we kept for ourselves. Those things will be dying with
us. Where we will find comfort and strength is in the time,
in the energy, in the wisdom that we passed on to others.
For when we can see the life we have planted in our children,
in our friends, even in the stranger that we helped along
the way, that life will be our glory. In that glory we can
close our eyes in peace, praying the prayer of every faithful
Christian: “Lord I do not come to you empty handed. I bring
with me all the seeds that I have planted, all the things
that I gave away.”
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