In John’s gospel, to shed light on the meaning of his upcoming death, Jesus employs the image of a grain of wheat.

To appreciate this more vividly, I pictured myself as this grain of wheat. Up there on the stalk I’m looking out on the beauty of the fields all around me. And in the prime of my granular existence, I imagine there’s nothing more to do in life than to sway in the wind and enjoy my ripeness.

Then someone comes along and tells me that if I just stay there, shining in the sun, I won’t amount to anything like my potential — unless I detach myself from the plant, fall to the ground, and die.

What kind of proposition is that? I know and value all I have now, and I’m being told to give it all for some future I can’t see, for some world that’s out beyond my farthest dreams!

On my part, it would take a mountain of trust in the person counseling me that this is the way to go. I’d need a huge dose of reassurance to take that step, for me to fall to the ground and die, to let myself drop down on the promise of something that’s mostly off in the future.

Pardon my impersonation of the grain, but it does get at something which Jesus in so many ways is proclaiming as truth.

In some way or other, dying is involved in bringing about new life. For newness to appear, there needs to be some giving over, some letting go. Without it we will remain just as we were, that little speck of grain.

In this very graphic way, Jesus lays out the pattern: needing to give oneself over in trust even to the point of seeming to lose everything — even dying — for the sake of bringing on His Father’s Kingdom.

Winding through many of his attitudes and especially actions, this core trait weaves itself through Vincent’s life.

In a 1640 letter to Jacques Tholard, he writes: “Remember, Monsieur, that roses are not gathered except in the midst of thorns and that heroic acts of virtue are accomplished only in weakness.