Through death to life!

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. Jn 12:24

When I hear or read the word "seed," I always have an image of the small paper packets that contain them. You know, the ones decorated with those brightly-colored pictures of such lovely flowers and succulent vegetables. I am always enticed upon seeing these and am instantly savoring a bountiful harvest, even though I totally lack gardening skills and choose not to develop them.

What I do know about gardening, though, is what we hear from our Lord Jesus in today's gospel: the seed must fall into the earth and die in order to bear fruit. I must be willing to die to self so that Christ may come to full flower in me. Only then will I be able to say with St. Paul, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

In her book The Reed of God, the poet and mystic Caryll Houselander reflects upon the seed and its need for gestation:

...a seed contains all the life and loveliness of the flower, but it contains in it a little hard black pip of a thing which even the glorious sun will not enliven unless it is buried in the earth.

There must be a period of gestation before anything can flower.

We live in an age of impatience, an age which in everything, from learning the ABC to industry, tries to cut out and do away with the natural season of growth. That is why so much in our life is abortive. We ought to let everything grow in us, as Christ grew in Mary. And we ought to realize that in everything that does grow quietly in us, Christ grows. We should let thoughts and words and songs grow slowly and unfold in darkness in us.

There are things that refuse to be violated by speed, that demand at least their proper time of growth; you can't, for example, cut out the time you will leave an apple pie in the oven. If you do, you won't have an apple pie. If you leave a thought, a chance word, a phrase of music, in your mind, growing and cherished for its proper season, you will have the wisdom or peace or strength that was hidden in that seed.

Dear Lord, Divine Gardener of my heart, my soul and my entire life, I entrust the seed of myself to you. Plant me where you will, my Jesus, but give me the grace to bloom where I am planted, all for our Father's praise and glory. Amen.

P.S. Caryll Houselander's book was published in 1944. If that was "an age of impatience," what would we call our age now?!?!