March 22, 2015: 5th Sunday of Lent B
March 22, 2015: 5th Sunday of Lent B
Click to hear Audio Homily
The past two weeks, I have been spending time with my mom. I brought her from Texas to see medical professionals for a particular condition she is experiencing. As long as I can remember, she had been energetic and always-on-the-go kind of a woman. She used to do aerobics everyday until recently. She said to me a few days ago that her mind wants to move, but her body is no longer cooperating. She was experiencing, in a sense, a dying of herself--her youthful energy has dissipated and her body is getting frail, prone to break.
If you think about it, there is a lot of dying that is mixed in with living. Every time we pass from one stage of life to another, something in us dies and something new is born. This past Christmas, I bought mom an iPod and filled it with Korean pop songs from her familiar era, but she said that she no longer enjoys that music. For some strange reason, she said, she wants to hear religious music. Similarly, she no longer enjoys Korean soap dramas. Instead, she enjoys watching spiritual retreat talks given by Korean priests on Youtube.
Jesus used an image of the grain of wheat buried in the cold damp earth as in a tomb. He said, “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.” There is a sense in which we must die if we are to live fully and fruitfully. We have to die to self in order to realize our full potential as human beings and children of God. Jesus set himself as the example. He sacrificed his life; his life wasn’t taken from him; he gave it, out of love for us. When the moment of death arrived he was filled with fear and doubt as he said, “My soul is troubled.” But he received the strength and courage from praying to His Father.
Concretely, what does all this dying to self or dying to our own will mean for you and me everyday of our lives? It means dying to our pride and asking for help; admitting our problem and seeking help from others and God; forgiving the person from our hearts and treating her/him with love once again. To die to self, then is to choose eternal life. This week let us ponder what in our lives that we need to modify or eliminate so that we can bear more fruit.
-Fr. Paul Yi
The past two weeks, I have been spending time with my mom. I brought her from Texas to see medical professionals for a particular condition she is experiencing. As long as I can remember, she had been energetic and always-on-the-go kind of a woman. She used to do aerobics everyday until recently. She said to me a few days ago that her mind wants to move, but her body is no longer cooperating. She was experiencing, in a sense, a dying of herself--her youthful energy has dissipated and her body is getting frail, prone to break.
If you think about it, there is a lot of dying that is mixed in with living. Every time we pass from one stage of life to another, something in us dies and something new is born. This past Christmas, I bought mom an iPod and filled it with Korean pop songs from her familiar era, but she said that she no longer enjoys that music. For some strange reason, she said, she wants to hear religious music. Similarly, she no longer enjoys Korean soap dramas. Instead, she enjoys watching spiritual retreat talks given by Korean priests on Youtube.
Jesus used an image of the grain of wheat buried in the cold damp earth as in a tomb. He said, “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.” There is a sense in which we must die if we are to live fully and fruitfully. We have to die to self in order to realize our full potential as human beings and children of God. Jesus set himself as the example. He sacrificed his life; his life wasn’t taken from him; he gave it, out of love for us. When the moment of death arrived he was filled with fear and doubt as he said, “My soul is troubled.” But he received the strength and courage from praying to His Father.
Concretely, what does all this dying to self or dying to our own will mean for you and me everyday of our lives? It means dying to our pride and asking for help; admitting our problem and seeking help from others and God; forgiving the person from our hearts and treating her/him with love once again. To die to self, then is to choose eternal life. This week let us ponder what in our lives that we need to modify or eliminate so that we can bear more fruit.
-Fr. Paul Yi
