Today the Church keeps the feast of a deacon who was roasted alive for refusing to hand over the treasures of the Church. The readings do not dwell on his courage. They ask a quieter question: where did he get what he gave away?
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: "Amen, amen, I say to you, 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. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honour whoever serves me." (Jn 12:24-26)
Paul is writing to the Corinthians about a collection. It is an ordinary parish matter, money for the poor of Jerusalem, and he handles it with the proverb everyone knows: "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." So far this is common sense, the arithmetic of any farmer. But then he says something that quietly dismantles the whole calculation. "The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed."
Read that slowly. The seed in our hand is not ours. It was put there. Before God asks anything of us, he has already provided the thing he is going to ask for. The generosity he requests is not drawn from our reserves; it is drawn from his, passing briefly through our hands. That is why Paul can add, without any pressure, "not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Nobody is being asked to impoverish himself. Somebody is being asked to let through what was never his to keep.
This changes what the Gospel means. "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat." We usually hear that as a demand: die to yourself, give up, let go. And it is that. But notice what the image also says about the grain. A grain of wheat is not raw material that gets used up. It is a thing already full of a harvest it cannot see. The dying is not a loss of substance; it is the only way the substance can become what it already contains.
The alternative Jesus names is not survival. It is loneliness. "It remains just a grain of wheat" — in the Greek, it remains alone. The grain that protects itself does not die, and that is precisely its tragedy: it stays exactly what it was, intact and solitary, one seed in a jar for as long as anyone cares to keep it. The fear of losing ourselves does not destroy us. It simply leaves us alone with ourselves, which over a lifetime is its own kind of ruin.
Lawrence understood the arithmetic. When the prefect of Rome demanded the treasures of the Church, he asked for three days, went out and gathered the poor, the crippled, the blind, the widows, and presented them: here are the treasures. It reads like defiance and it was, but underneath the wit there is a piece of theology. He did not invent that treasure. He had received it. The Church's wealth had been handed to him to distribute, and he distributed it, first to the poor and finally in his own body. He gave what he had been given, and he gave it cheerfully, which is the only detail the tradition preserves about his manner.
Most of us are not asked for that. We are asked for something less dramatic and, in its own way, harder to sustain, because it has no witnesses. The patience given to us this morning is to be spent today on the person who tries it. The time we were given is to be handed to someone who needs an hour. The word of encouragement we can say is a seed placed in our hand for someone else's field, not for our own granary. In every case the sequence is the same: received first, given second. We are stewards of a harvest we did not plant.
This is the pattern the Missionaries of Bethlehem have always read in the Child. God did not begin his work among us out of a surplus he could spare. He came as a seed, small enough to be overlooked, buried in a village nobody had heard of, in a family with no standing. Everything that came afterwards was already in that beginning, and none of it could have come any other way. He is not a God who spends himself and runs out. He is a God who gives himself away and multiplies.
And there is a promise attached that we tend to skip. "Where I am, there also will my servant be." The reward for following is not something Christ hands over at the end; it is his own company along the way. We are not sent ahead alone into the ground. He has been there first, and he stays. That is what makes the losing bearable — not heroism, but company.
So the day puts a small and testable question to us. Not "what great thing could I sacrifice?" but "what have I been handed this week that I am holding rather than sowing?" Something has been put in our hand. It may be money, it may be an ability, it may be nothing more than the capacity to listen without interrupting. It is seed. It was given to be given.
The harvest is not our responsibility. Paul is clear about that too: God "will increase the harvest of your righteousness." Ours is the sowing, which is small, and often unspectacular, and takes place in the dark. The rest is his.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Father, you supply the seed before you ask for the sowing, and everything we have to give is first of all your gift passing through our hands. Free us from the fear that makes us hoard, and from the sadness of the grain that stays alone. Teach us the cheerfulness of Saint Lawrence, who knew that the treasure he handed over had been entrusted to him for exactly that purpose. Where your Son has gone into the ground, let us be willing to follow, trusting that you multiply what we release. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- What has been placed in our hands this week that we are keeping rather than sowing?
- Where does our giving still feel like a loss of substance rather than the passing on of a gift?
- Are we more afraid of dying to ourselves, or of ending up alone with ourselves?
