Daily Reflection
August 10, 2026

Feast of St. Lawrence, Martyr

Today’s feast interrupts the Liturgy of Ordinary Time to pray with the memory of a life well-planted in the Body and Spirit of Christ. Reading of his life and way of dying is quite encouraging and good for the spiritual eating.

In both Readings today, there is the central theme of planting, dying and fruitfully rising. Please read slowly the picturesque verses from Paul and John. When we were young Jesuits in formation, during our silent meals, each day we were read stories from the book, The Martyrology. There would be horrific tales of early Christians being boiled, drowned, decapitated, tarred other ones which made dinner not-so-tasty, especially when asking quietly to pass the catsup.

In today’s Gospel, a seed is seen as having to die to itself as a single seed so as to give fruit in its changed form. Imagine a little bulb refusing to its being planted, because it love for  its little round identity. It had always been a bulb and was comfortable just being so.

Here’s a strange thought. What if an impregnated ova, in its fetal-self, says to its self, “I will create my own self and while enjoying temporarily, its independence it vanishes exactly because of its independence. The sperm nor the ova can do it alone. The seed dies into the ground; the sperm and ova die into a true fruitful self.

Now we turn and reflect upon the phrase, “hate his life” or “Loves his life”, what can that mean! Try this on for further thoughtfulness and prayer.

Now imagine a person who loves his/her life so isolatedly that she/he holds the self apart from giving life, but only taking it in. This is not exactly “love”, but absorption. Yes, self-creation is not creation, but destruction. The seed has a built-in longing for its being more than a seed, but for fruit and life. The seed in one sense, “hates” itself for not being able to be fruitful merely by its seedishness. It needs the earth, the sun and the rains, quite dependent on that little seed.

We, as with the martyrs have our interior battles between loving the self enough to hate radical self-preoccupation, self-establishness, and hiding. Like the seed, we love what God’s faithful love will bring to the lives of others by bringing life to, and so, through each of us. The great life to come is not a reward, but the final produce of a productive and creative life through our dying to our self-centered un-creational existence. Rather it will be a continuation of God’s creative love within, around and with us. God’s love, like the nourishing soil, sun and rains, serves us and so we serve God, in Christ, by serving God’s people. After all, serving others is a graceful way of loving the goodness of ourselves, good enough to live and give away. We cannot do it alone!