Learning to die teaches us secret of authentic living

A great lesson that Jesus taught us deals with living and dying. He said, “Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” (John 12-24)

Real living is about dying. If we have never learned how to die, we will never really live. I am not just talking about physical death and resurrection, that ultimate death and resurrection, which are our life’s focus. To be alive we need to die to many things that prevent us from being totally alive.

What we need to die to will change according to how our lives change. The young person, the single or married person, the elderly, all need to die to certain things, if they want to live authentically, according to their situation in life.

We need to live our lives in the spirit of who we are at any given time. If we try to live in one stage of our lives as if we were in another, it ends up robbing us of the present. For example, we all see how strange it is when a person rebels against growing old. Older people who try to look and act like younger people, end up looking more like clowns than anything else. Their clothes, hair color, and make-up all seem out of place. They are refusing to die to their youth.

As St. Paul says, “When I was a child, I acted like a child. Now that I am an adult, I have put away the things of childhood.” The same is true of young people who grow old too fast. They try to act as adults when they are still growing up. They often find themselves acting with a false sense of maturity, pretending they are something they are not. This can be very dangerous when it involves behavior that is entirely inappropriate for their age. Never really experiencing the gift of childhood can have serious consequences later in life.

We find another clear illustration of this in marriage. Marriage is not for the weak of heart. The great demands of married life require much dying. When a man and a woman marry, both must put to death the lives they knew as single people. This is an absolute requirement for a happy and fulfilling marriage.

When a married person still lives with the mind-set of a single person, then troubles will soon find their way into that relationship. Marriage is a community of life and love. A husband and wife no longer have the luxury of making decisions on their own. Every significant decision has to be brought to their newly created relationship. The decisions to buy this thing, go to that place, do this activity and so on all have to have the consensus of both parties.

When one party to the marriage decides that he or she can still think and act as if he or she were single, then bad things begin to happen. This kind of behavior starts to chip away at the heart of the marriage. Over time, as the selfish acts multiply, the marriage partnership gradually gets worn down to a point where recognizing an authentic marriage is difficult.

For a marriage to grow and have God’s blessings, both husband and wife must put to death their lives as single people. If they commit themselves to dying to their old lives and living their new life, then they will experience how wonderful and life-giving such a partnership can be.

Jesus’ image of the grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying so it can produce much fruit shows that we can help bring life out of death. Our “dyings” are not easy. Letting go and entrusting our lives to God take courage. Let us look at what we need to die to so we can experience new life.