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About the Author

Margaret (Peggy) Collins '97 is a reporter for The Record, an award-winning New Jersey newspaper. Prior to that, Peggy worked for Joseph Califano, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey

Thinking Outloud

"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit." (John 12:24)

Okay. Cards on the table: I have trouble with these lines.

It sounds as if you're only worth something when you die - like dying is a good thing. That's extremely difficult for me to even type. There's a pang in my heart as I do.

My father, Jim, died not too long ago. I walked with him for many days and nights over many months as he lived out a ferocious battle with cancer. My family and I held his hands as he took his last breath. It's difficult to think of his death as producing "much fruit" when we feel such loss.

But then I remember a card my Dad and I loved. We used to recite its words many mornings while sitting in New York Hospital after his first, second and third brain surgeries. And we would remind ourselves of its message many afternoons as we watched the chemotherapy drip from the I.V. bag into his right arm.

Mother Teresa wrote that. You can probably find the card in Barnes and Noble. Her wisdom echoes the words of this week's Gospel reading about grains of sand.

Only when you love enough to hurt - with that level of courage and selflessness - do you gain more love.

Only when you risk enough to really live - even if you fail sometimes - do you become the person you were most meant to be: A person whose life you will be proud to have lived. A person who continues to touch lives long after the body has been given rest, and peace.

There are too many men and women around the world - in Iraq, Sudan, Israel and America's inner cities, for example - who are serving in war, living in poverty and murdering their neighbors. They come face to face with the power of love and life on a daily basis. But for many of us busy with our lives, it is a challenge to remember to live each day as if it is our last...and to treat each person as if he or she is your last love on earth.

In this Gospel, the apostle John wrote following his line about grains of wheat:
"Whoever loves his life, loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life."

So often in this world today of iPods, cell phones, lap tops, fast cars and sexy stilettos we are too afraid to do the simplest things: love enough to hurt and live enough to die. That is our challenge this Lenten season and always as Catholics and as human beings.