Today’s Gospel really challenges us in a direct way. Jesus is saying to us that we must die like the grain of wheat to bear much fruit. In order for us to be with Jesus forever, there is a part of us that must die. This is a message that is hard for any of us to receive no matter how long we have been trying to follow Jesus. This message can be even harder when we are first starting out on this journey.
This hit home to me when I worked at Christ the King Jesuit College Prep on the westside of Chicago. A member of the Cristo Rey Network, Christ the King serves a predominantly African-American student body, who like many young people struggle to understand how to follow Jesus and why a part of them must die to do so.
When trying to help them understand this I played a song by my favorite rap group, Bone Thugs N Harmony, entitled, “All The Way.” The refrain of this song goes,
From the cradle to the grave
All the way, all the way
I challenged my students to hear these lyrics as motivation to give their all, their whole selves into their relationship with God. Like any relationship, it is scary because relationships mean commitment, and commitment means you cannot always do whatever you want anymore. This is the kind of death Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel. But there is life in this death because going all the way with our commitment to God allows us to follow Jesus in a saintly way, wherever Jesus might be. My students at Christ the King understood this very clearly. In fact, for the rest of the week, a number of students would sing this song as they walked into my class.
From the cradle to the grave
All the way, all the way
Today we celebrate the feast of all the Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus, those Jesuit who went all the way in their relationship with God. I ask you to pray for all of the students at Christ the King, everyone involved in Jesuit ministries, and you yourselves as well, that we all can go all the way like the saints and blessed we honor today.
—Adam DeLeon, S.J. is a Jesuit scholastic studying theology in preparation for ordination at Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA.