Coming to Pieces
Fifth Sunday in Lent (L5B), March 29, 2009
By Fr. John Foley, S. J.

SUNDAY READINGS

A tiny grain ensconces itself within the earth. It tucks itself into complete darkness, but fearlessly, because its tough, safe shell is home. The seed knows it belongs there. In quiet. In growth.

Then calamity.

The shell-shelter turns tight and encroaching and painful. The growing seed finds that its protector is opposing it, holding it back. Crushing it. Only one answer. As if planned from all eternity, the husky shell cracks right open. Wait, I need you, the seed shouts! Moisture trickles in, along with bits of dank, cold soil. Anything and everything can now march right into the heart of what was a quiet, pure place.

The seed goes to pieces. These pieces cope somehow, crazily extending their new, thin arm outward so it can slither through the shell’s cracks. It dares into the rough, cold mud. How foolish and shaming. Stay where safety is, you fool!

The transforming little self takes on an unexpected new life, a new home, but now in the slippery soil. Eking upwards, slowly and cautiously, it makes its way. But it runs right straight into a huge, unmovable rock. A jagged, rough and careless rock, heedless of tiny green shoots. And so the story ends.

Except that the former seed appears to have will power. It is seeking something—urging itself toward some pressing objective, rooting its way with intuitive ambition, obstacle or not.

It fingers its way along the brutal under-edge of the rock, fearfully and with rending pain. At last, after what seem like years, it achieves the far under-edge and corner of this gnarly rock. It starts upward again.

Such a journey. Now there are hard clods to press through, and pebbles aplenty. The higher soil gradually dries up and stops yielding to the growth. The top crust of ground forbids any more movement: an ultimate, intractable and stupefying barrier.

Give up, all voices say.

Except one, from within. Push. Push, it whispers. Find a weak spot. Push hard! The young sprout locates just a thinnest fracture in the tough skin. With certainty that might have been scratched directly onto its heart, the vine-to-be discovers it was made for what lay ahead, not for the darkness and blindness behind.

Light! Warmth! Tiny arms squirm out of new stems and they reach out for the sun’s astonishing light. They stretch and yawn in the wafting breezes of Spring.

You know the rest of this story, and how joyous the outcome is.

It is just like our own journey, if we dare venture through the dark corridors.

Do not worry, child, God says, just trust me. “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”(Gospel).

But we do worry. The dark and the pain must be our own fault. “Create a clean heart in me, O God. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt,” we say (Responsorial Psalm). Christ himself shows the way in his crucifixion. He does it “with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death” (Second Reading). And he is heard.

There is only way for the seeds of our souls to escape death. They must rupture the safety shield, and begin the journey of courage. They must be taught love within the darkness. Jesus learned obedience through suffering. So must we.

Come to the light, God says. Come through the dark.

_________
[For an example of the opposite approach, try this:

Oh I am a chickie who lives in an egg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
The hens they all cackle, the roosters all beg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
For I hear all the talk of pollution and war
As the people all shout and the airplanes roar,
So I’m staying in here where it’s safe and it’s warm,
And I WILL NOT HATCH!

Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) p. 127.]