If We Have Died with Christ We shall also Live with Christ"

Sunday Mass Readings

"If we have died with him
we shall also live with him;
if we persevere
we shall also reign with him." (2 Tim 2:11-12)

The above verses are taken from an early Christian hymn. Paul uses it in his letter to Timothy to urge the early Christians to remain faithful to Christ in the midst of adversity. The hymn is relevant even today. For Paul, death is a significant theme because Jesus himself suffered and died. He deals with death in many ways. First, there is the physical death that leads to martyrdom. Secondly, for Paul, baptism is a kind of dying and rising. When the person in immersed into the water, it symbolizes death - participation in the death of Christ. When the person emerges from the water it symbolizes new life – a participation in the resurrection of Christ (Rom 6). And then there is the daily dying to one self to be able to live the new life of Christ. No matter how we look at it, for Christians, suffering and death are inevitable. However, suffering for the sake of Christ is not a meaningless suffering. Rather, it is suffering for a worthy cause – for being faithful to Christ and his teachings. It is a suffering that prepares the way for a participation in the resurrection of Jesus. “If we die with him, we will live with him.”

“If we persevere, we shall also reign with him.” As the beginning of this reading describes it for us, Paul wrote this letter from his prison cell. In the face of intense persecution some Christians persevered while others deserted the faith. The people who get to reign with Christ are the ones who did not give up.

Perseverance and steadfastness is difficult even today. In our times, when the culture of promiscuity, the culture of death, the culture of individualism, the culture of competition, the culture of senseless profit, the culture of intolerance, the culture of paganism are rife, it takes more that goodwill to live as Christians who live by an ethic that is counter-cultural. It takes perseverance to cling on to purity. It takes perseverance to practice neighbourly love. It takes perseverance to practice self-sacrificing concern, to put other before us. It takes perseverance to develop the virtues of patience, of kindness, faith, fidelity. It takes perseverance to forgive. It takes perseverance to bring up children the Christian way. But, “if we persevere we shall reign with him.”

Let our dying with Christ and our perseverance in faith lead us to eternal life.