The following is Bishop Caggiano’s homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
My dear friends,
The days of our annual commemoration of the Lord’s agony and death are fast approaching in this last full week of lent. As we gather in this sacred place with the images, the sacred images covered in purple, reminding us to draw our attention ever more closely to those moments of the Lord’s gift, of Himself, His passion, His death and His resurrection. Today the Lord gives us a very clear lesson what it is He expects of those who wish to follow Him. And He says, the grain of wheat must ground and die. And of course, you and I are the grain of wheat.
That a disciple is not greater than His master. And so, if we wish to follow in the footsteps of the Lord, we too must be willing to die to ourselves.
So allow me to ask you a question. What does that mean? Or to put the question another way, how do you and I actually die to ourselves?
To answer the first question, the answer is deceptively easy. What it means is that in the end, there’s only one will to follow. And we all have a choice. It is either God’s will or our own will. And that battle between those two wills is the dying to self.
It’s finding what the Lord is asking of you and me in the vocations of our lives and choosing, despite the sacrifice or cost, to do what He asks, not do what we want or do what we will or do what we desire. It is in many ways our answer to the fundamental sin we call original sin. At the hands of our parents, who chose to put themselves in the place of God rather than to honor God, who told them, of all things, you are not to touch the fruit of this one tree. But if that is in fact what it means, then my second question takes on even greater importance. How do we do that?
How do you and I learn to put God’s will first? Well, you know, my friends, taking a who said to their congregation, as I’m sharing with you, my friends, that perhaps the very structure of the cross can teach us how, from Good Friday, we will look upon the cross of Jesus Christ, and we will look upon it not simply to thank Him for the gift of Himself, but also to remind ourselves what we are to do. And the very physical cross teaches us three lessons.
Number one, if you and I were alive at the time Jesus was crucified, and we had the enormous privilege, I may say, to stand in front of the cross in order to look at Jesus, we would have to look up, because the Romans created the cross in such a way that you could not reach the person who was crucified because they would be afraid that they would be taken down by mobs of people who did not want this person to die. And so they crucified a person so high up on the one beam that in order to look at them, you would have to look up.
And that’s lesson number one, that what the Lord asks of us is to keep our eyes fixed on the heavens. Or I may say, heaven, that all that we do and choose in your life and mine, if it is not leading us closer to heaven, then don’t do it. For it is your will and mine, not His. For He wills that all of us, all of us come to the glory of heaven. Lesson number one.
Lesson number two. Jesus carried the cross beam that He was nailed to first as He walked, His agony. And that crossbeam was designed so that the person who was crucified would have to literally hang and therefore not able to breathe easily on the cross because a person who was crucified eventually would suffocate to death. But there’s a lesson here, for Jesus did not. Jesus was not forced to die.
He chose to die. And as He extended His hands, He was reminding us of the charity of his heart. For as He embraces all people of every race, language, and way of life, He’s reminding us that the cross is the invitation to love, as He did everyone, all people, saints, and sinners alike. And if we are not willing to love, as He did, recklessly, generously, forgivingly, mercifully, then we’re choosing our will over His.
And lastly, my friends, as you know, Calvary was a small little mountain, very rocky, and yet the cross was put into the soil and buttressed by the rocks around it.
And that literal need to put it into the soil reminds us. The soil itself reminds us of the third lesson, that we are called to be a people, not afraid to put our feet onto the soil, the dirt of this world, and know the truth and admit the truth in humility, humility which comes from the word dirt. To know the truth about you and me, our faults and failings, the truth about our neighbors, the truth of who Jesus is. And never be afraid to embrace the truth. For Jesus said, the truth shall set you free.
And when we decide to deceive, lie, or believe somebody else’s truth, then we are not dying to ourselves.
So how do we die to ourselves?
With our eyes always fixed on heaven, with a heart that is ready to love as Jesus did, and always allowing the truth to be our guide in every moment of your life and mine, my friends, we will have no choice but to slowly die to everything that is not of God and to ever more clearly see his holy will for you and me. And then, at that point, the Lord can point for us not only agony, crucifixion and death but He will point to us our destiny of everlasting life.
