Rev. Fr. C. Joseph
Counsellor, St. Joseph’s College, Jakhama
“Christ became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” (phil 2:8-9) Death is not always physical or final. You die many times while you are alive. Your childhood, for example, dies as you become an adult. Your single life dies when you join another in marriage. And your career, the role you play in life, dies when you retire. Each benchmark of maturation requires a death of your former self.
Many, however, resist “dying.” A young person who won’t leave home after graduating from school, a laid off employee who avoids training for a different career, or an insolvent businessman who stubbornly refuses to file for bankruptcy are all indicators of a fear to let go of a phase of life that has ended. Because their identity is tied to a role, these individuals literally feel that surrendering this role is the same as dying. They don’t know who they are without it. Yet hanging on to a stage of life that has run its course, in addition to being futile, prevents the next stage from beginning.
Many of the most successful people in the world, including Moses, Kind David and of course Jesus, did not achieve success until their second or even third careers. These individuals had to endure a death of the life they had been living in order to live the life they were destined to live. Moses, for example was a prince of Egypt and then a Bedouin shepherd before becoming a leader of the Israelites. Before he became royalty, David was a simple shepherd, the smallest of his brothers, and then a warrior. And Jesus, because he did not start his mission until around the age of thirty, surely had some prior vocation. As a seed must die to become to a flower, you too must be willing, as Jesus said in Mathew 16:25, to lose your life in order to find it.
Death is a success secret because endings give way to new beginnings. Sometimes you have to let your hopes and dreams, your accomplishments and possessions, and even your role or persona, die before your true mission and purpose can be revealed to you. If you have taken the wrong path, assumed a mistaken identity, or pursued a meaningless goal, to achieve your higher purpose, that part of your life has to come to an end. It must die. Your experience suffering, like when Jesus sweat blood in the garden of Gethsemane, when you resist the inevitable. Jesus had to die on the cross so he could fulfil his mission and rise on the third day.
Death is the ultimate mystery. While most dread this event, it is after all a transition, a step toward a new life. While everyone will experience death eventually, not everyone will, as William Wallace said in the film Braveheart, really live. As a caterpillar must die to become a butterfly, you too must die to be born again into something more beautiful, radiant and magnificent. Jesus said, “He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.” (Jn 11:25) Death is the secret to rising again.
