29th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45) 

Dear People of God, the essential teaching contained in this Sunday’s  Gospel passage from Saint Mark, is ‘muddied’ somewhat by a question of translation which needs to be considered first of all, because it does quickly lead to a serious issue concerning Catholic spirituality which translators are not necessarily sufficiently aware of.

There are two current translations of today’s Gospel focus:

whoever would be first among you MUST/WILL be slave of all. Whoever would be great among you MUST/WILL be your servant; 

Literally speaking, “must”,  repeated twice, should be translated, more correctly, by the word, “will”.

Let us therefore consider the two different appreciations of what our Evangelist, St. Mark, quotes Jesus as having taught in his Gospel:

Whoever would be great among you will be your servant; and whoever would be first among you will be slave of all.

Notice first of all that Jesus was speaking privately to His chosen disciples, each of whom He knew intimately, both with regard to their own individual character and to their personal love for, and commitment to, Himself.  They were men He, Jesus, was in the very process of training to become His Apostles and the founders of His future Church:

            Whoever would be great among you will be... 

Some translators say that here Jesus means ‘must make yourself to be…’ a servant of the others, because His words,  ‘whoever would be great’, imply that to attain  their desire, to show, prove themselves be great, the disciple must DO something that distinguishes and shows him to be that ‘special’!  And surely, we can understand such a trend of thought.

Yes, we can understand that because it is a normal, worldly, way of thinking.  But, precisely, here we are not considering the thought patterns of every-day human beings firmly ensconced in an ordinary worldly situation: we are thinking about men chosen by God first of all to love and follow Jesus; men then being further singled out by Jesus Himself for membership in a unique group known as The Twelve; and finally, they were men who heard carefully chosen words addressed to them alone by Jesus, the ‘Word’ of God and the ‘Wisdom’ of God made flesh.
 
The translation ‘Whoever would be great among you must be your servant’ demands – first of all -- that anyone of them with such a desire must do something to make, to  prove, himself, and thus it presumes a measure of self-seeking and of self-esteem that is most certainly not what Jesus wanted in His Apostles.
Of course, ‘must be your servant’ can mean ‘must become, must be made’, by God, your servant.’ But that is most certainly not the first implication of that translation.
 
On the other hand, our translation ‘Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant’, declares that any one of them with – anyone to whom God has indeed given -- aspirations, hopes, prayers for such greatness, will be brought by God the Father to serve his brethren; either in actual physical service, or in self-sacrificing spiritual humility and fraternal commitment.  Now that is the way Jesus Himself lived in our regard: not choosing for Himself, but being led by His Father, just as our first reading, taken from the book of Isaiah, made so abundantly clear:
 
                It was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put him to grief.
 
                The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
 
And this attitude is incontrovertibly shown by Our Blessed Lord at His agony in the Garden when He said:
 
Abba, Father, all things are possible for You.  Remove this cup from Me; before adding, yet not what I will but what You will. (Mark 14:36)
 
Let us therefore look back at the preposterous request made (according to Mark’s Gospel which vividly records Peter’s preaching) by James and John, sons of Zebedee:
 
                Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You!!
 
Matthew tries to make it more acceptable by saying the request was made by the mother of those two disciples … but the original indignation of their fellow apostles is surely most clearly witnessed to, and justified by, Mark’s account as remembered by Peter.

Therefore, assuming Mark is accurate,  and that James and John did themselves make such an outrageous request of Jesus, the question arises, ‘Why did Jesus treat their request so seriously?’  And surely the answer must be, ‘Because He had something supremely important to teach all twelve of His future apostles from the faux pas of James and John;  He is about to show them something essential for their future Apostolic understanding of themselves and of the ways of their God, His Father.
 
James and John had tried to express, in badly chosen words -- but also quite simply and humbly before Jesus -- what His Father was trying to inspire in them: an divine aspiration, which --  in no circumstances whatsoever -- was to be mistaken as a merely human ambition.

Yes, you will be great because My Father is trying to draw you along, guide you on, His way for you; but His will alone will be done in you, not your will for your own personal renown, not even your will for His renown.  His will, will be done, in you, and it will be done in His way.

Jesus took their preposterous but childishly innocent request seriously, because they were indeed intended to become Apostles for the establishment of His Church and the Kingdom of God, and this folly, this misunderstanding of His Father’s intentions in their regard, needed to be corrected.  Indeed, in a certain measure it was being corrected at that very moment, by the well-deserved embarrassment James and John had to endure when they dropped back -- Jesus usually walked in front of His Apostles -- to rejoin their indignant fellow Apostles, whom they had earlier, so symbolically, left behind in order to go ahead and talk privately with Jesus. 

Jesus however, although once again walking alone, ahead of His Apostles, noticed what was going on behind Him and we are told:

He summoned them, and said to them…. WHOEVER WISHES TO BE GREAT AMONG YOU WILL BE YOUR SERVANT; WHOEVER WISHES TO BE FIRST AMONG YOU WILL BE THE SLAVE OF ALL.

They would all have learnt so much about themselves and about God’s will for them from those words of Jesus!

Dear People of God, as we consider the history of Mother Church past and present, we can surely appreciate the superhuman task that faced and still faces the Twelve Apostles and their subsequent episcopal successors: the establishment of a cohesive Catholic Church: one in faith, morals, and obedience, throughout history and for all mankind.  They would indeed have the Holy Spirit, ‘Gifted’ them by Jesus, abiding with them as a Body, and forming them individually to become each a true member of that Body of Christ, for the glory of God the Father and the salvation of all men and women of good will.  But what immense difficulties would subsequently arise through those who -- like James and John, though not so innocently as they -- would mistake  their own ambitions for God’s inspiration, for God’s inviting and guiding grace?  How many souls would, do, and will, suffer from the overweening pride of individuals in powerful positions: be they bombastic, arrogant, and ambitious prelates or scheming, harsh and unbending, mother superiors!

Undoubtedly, however, the single most important task for Mother Church today is the defence, purification and exaltation of Christian family life; and the supreme need in Catholic spirituality is for all Catholic parents to assume family responsibility and exercise shared and loving parental authority; and -- forgetting themselves --  to draw ever closer to Jesus, humbly and patiently centred on doing the will of God the Father: becoming ever more able to discern and distinguish His will from their own, and His glory from their own reputation, regardless of the blame or acclamation of men.
 
Dear People of God, let us aspire with all our heart to love Jesus for the Father and to serve Jesus by His Spirit, in the Church called to Jesus by His Father for the salvation of men and women of good will.  Let us not seek a self-called Church of human choice, strong in numbers and bolstered by popularity, but barren of fruit born of God’s grace and bereft of His uniquely saving presence.