You Might Die Trying

33rd Sunday of the Year

I don’t know if everyone’s had a chance to talk to [student’s name] in the past couple of days, but if you have, I’m sure she’s told you that we went to a Dave Matthews Band concert Friday night. It might not be entirely clear in her description of the event, however, that she and I made plans and bought tickets independently of each other; but we did, in fact, end up seeing Dave Matthews together, and it was, as we both expected, an incredible show.

I was surprised to find a student here who was a huge DMB fan like me, since the band has been together longer than even I’ve been alive. So, assuming the rest of you are unenlightened, you should know that DMB fans attend a lot of shows—this was only my fourth—because they have a lot of songs, and every night they play a different set. So, you find yourself ‘chasing’ after your favorites. On Friday, I got one of mine for the first time, a song called “You Might Die Trying.”

Unfortunately, there are liturgical rules prohibiting me from taking the next nine minutes to play it for you, but I can at least quote you a few lines:

If you give, you begin to live
You get the world
If you give, you begin to live
but you might die trying

I know I say a lot of ridiculous things, but I’m not only playing at hyperbole when I say that listening to Dave Matthews comes close to a religious experience for me, because I can’t help but hear in those words a summary teaching of the Gospel.

The logic of the Gospel is this: We find our lives only when we give ourselves away, and in giving ourselves away we gain everything in return. “If you give, you begin to live. You get the world.” But this process of self-gift is difficult and requires nothing less than for us to die to ourselves. Hence, “If you give, you begin to live, but you might die trying.” To my mind, it’s all right there. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mk. 8:36). “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left [everything] for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age… and in the age to come eternal life” (Mk. 10:29-30). “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24). Here is how St. Paul put it: “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore, all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for us” (2 Cor. 5:15).

If there’s anything to correct in Dave’s theology, it’s the conditional “might.” You will die trying. If anything’s conditional, it’s whether or not we will see it through. C.S. Lewis said it like this, “Die before you die. There is no chance after.” And the readings this week and for the next several weeks put the emphasis on the “no chance after.” Because at the end of time, when Christ returns in his glory, he will separate those who died in him from those who refused to. Those who gave away their life will find it in eternity; and those who clung to their life will lose it forever. The prophet Daniel tells us, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.” In the Gospel, Jesus says that on the last day, when all see “the Son of Man coming in the clouds… he will send out the angels and gather his elect.” After that happens, there’s no going back.

The tricky part is that we don’t know when that will happen. Any day on earth could be our last, and the Lord could return today or any day in the future. “But of that day or hour, no one knows.” So the impetus of that uncertainty is to live every day as if it were our last, because it could be. And that means that every day we live, we should be focused on dying—dying to our self, “so that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose again for us.” The daily task of dying is about lightening our grip, taking ourselves a little less seriously, and trying to give a little bit more of ourselves away every day. We should carry ourselves so lightly that we are, as it were, falling out of our own hands. Let me tell you, dying ain’t easy. But it’s what has to happen if we are to live. Otherwise, we’ll never become the people God wants us to be—and that would be a terrible tragedy, in the words of Daniel, “an everlasting horror and disgrace.” Yet to become who God wants us to be is the greatest joy and one that will be ours for eternity.

If the stakes are that high, and the task before us that difficult, then how can we have hope that this is even possible?

In a few moments, two of our friends will receive the sacrament of confirmation. Confirmation is a ‘strengthening’ of the gifts we received at baptism for a specific purpose: to bear witness. The word for witness in Greek is martus, from which we get martyr. Martyrs are those who die for Christ, and martyrdom can take a few different forms, but we’re all meant for it in one way or another. Confirmation is the sacrament that makes it possible for us to martyrs, to be those who die as witnesses to Christ; and the daily martyrdom we are all called to embrace is the death we make to our self each and every day. This evening, [students’ names] will receive the grace that will allow them to live “no longer for themselves”; and as they do, let us recommit ourselves to cooperate with the same grace we have already received, that we also may live “for him who died and rose again for us.” It is by this sacrament and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance that God will accomplish the work he has begun in us.

The last thing I want to say is that ‘dying to self’ has no business leading us to self-hatred. Yes, it begins with humbly admitting that we are not the people we should be, and there are parts of us that need to be different, but all of this is in view of the life that God wants and makes possible for us. We should not walk around with our heads hung low, wallowing in our problems, constantly beating ourselves up. If we do that, then Christ might has well have not become human and died for our sins, because we’d still be living in them. As Christians, even as we struggle with giving ourselves away and fall back time and again into our pride, we always and without fail go forward as people who have been redeemed by Christ, set free from sin and death, and called to share in eternal life. All we need to do is let Christ finish the job in us by getting out of his way. To do that, we just might, in fact, die trying—and, please God, we will.

Homily preached November 17, 2024 at Mount St. Mary’s University