29th.
Sunday (Year B)
(Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16;
Mark 10:35-45)
St. Matthew tells us (6:33) that Jesus once said:
Seek first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides;
and in today’s Gospel reading we are told of two brothers apparently
exemplifying that attitude, James and John, members of Jesus’ most intimate
circle of disciples, ask for a place, a really special place, in the Kingdom:
They said to Jesus, "Grant that
in Your glory that we may sit, one at Your right hand and the other at Your
left."
However, despite their eagerness in seeking the kingdom of
God, the two brothers can in no way be said to have exemplified the fulness of
Jesus’ teaching since He recommended that the search for the kingdom of God
should go hand in hand with a search for the righteousness of God:
Seek first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness.
James and John wanted prestigious seats in the glory of
God’s Kingdom on the basis of favouritism or special privilege, and Jesus said
that such positions were not His to give in such a way: they could only be bestowed
on the basis of the righteous judgement of the all-holy God. The brothers had asked for places of
privilege in the Kingdom of the heavenly Father, without seeking equally to
share in His righteousness; and though their mother might well have been the
motivating power behind that request as St. Matthew tells us, their somewhat glib
response to the awesome question Jesus subsequently put to them suggests that
they had not themselves truly ‘thought through’ the implications of their
request:
Can you drink the cup that I
drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
Immediately answering that they could indeed drink His cup
and be baptized with His baptism, they were behaving in much the same way as the
notoriously self-confident and dynamic Peter would do later on when saying:
Though all should have their
faith shaken, mine will not be. Even though I should have to die with You, I
will not deny You! Lord, I am prepared to go both to prison and to die with
You." (Mark 14:29; Matthew
26:35; Luke 22:33.)
That, however, was how Peter would speak on hearing that
Jesus was being threatened with death: those words were a heartfelt and
beautiful protestation of concern and love, before being also an ill-considered
promise of personal fidelity far beyond him.
Peter can be excused to a large extent in that over-appreciation and
over-statement of his own powers because he was being impelled by his anxiety
for Jesus under threat of violent death;
James and John, however, had no such laudable motivation for their over-zealous
and over- confident words, springing mainly – at the moment -- from their ill-considered
desire to be greatest, which, Mark tells us, had already shown itself shortly
before:
Jesus asked the disciples,
"What were you arguing about on the way?" But they remained silent. They
had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.
(Mark 9:33-35)
Despite Jesus’ explicit teaching on that occasion – ‘if
anyone desires to be first of all he shall be last of all and servant of all’ –
and their own subsequent embarrassment, James and John still hankered after the
position of the ‘greatest’. As yet, they
knew very little about seeking the righteousness of the Father, and Jesus would
have to teach them about it to the very end, as we find at the Last Supper in
His sacerdotal prayer before the whole gathering:
Righteous Father, the world does not
know You, but I know You; and these know that You have sent Me; I made known to them Your name, and I will make it known.
(John 17:25-26)
Jesus, when speaking of His Father or about the mission for
which He had been sent, consistently attributed nothing to Himself, openly saying:
No one can come to Me unless the
Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him on the last day. (John
6:44)
Everything that the Father gives
Me will come to Me, I will not reject anyone who comes to Me, because I came
down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the One who sent Me.
(John 6:37-38)
Clearly, Jesus did not consider that, whether by His
preaching, His miracles, or by His Personality, He would effectively and
decisively draw disciples to Himself; no, only those sent by the Father would
come to Him.
That was His example of seeking the righteousness of the
Father; an example that needed to be closely observed, secretly pondered, and ultimately
imitated, by those impetuous brothers James and John; as indeed by all the
disciples who had shared in that animated discussion among them about who was
the greatest.
Jesus supreme attitude and teaching in this respect was
manifest above all in His death. We were
told in the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant, the future
Messiah … concerning Jesus:
It was the Lord’s will
to crush Him with pain.
Though Son and Saviour, Jesus ... in His embraced weakness
as perfect Man ... did not take upon Himself suffering and grief; His
invincible strength lay in the fact that it was the path traced out for Him
by His Father. As man, He had indeed
long prepared for it but He did not seek it out for Himself; all He
wanted to do was His Father’s will. He
would, however, and He could, most lovingly accept it as His Father’s gift!
And so, the prophet went on:
By making His life as a
reparation offering, He shall see His offspring, shall lengthen His days.
All would then happen, the prophet tells us, in such a way
that:
The Lord’s will shall be
accomplished through Him.
Jesus could only guide to such sublime perfection disciples
who were eager to learn: and that is why He was secretly pleased with the
ardent desire of Peter, James, and John, and indeed of all His closest
disciples, to be great in the Kingdom of God.
Initially, such desires appeared to
be nothing better than merely human ambition seeking superiority and
precedence; Jesus, however, knew that deep down, they were the expression – as
yet, tarnished indeed -- of the disciples overwhelming desire to share with Him, to be united, as closely as
possible, with Him, on earth as in heaven; and such desires could -- like
diamonds -- be skillfully cut and purified before finally being polished to
perfection by the divine artificer.
Today, however, dear People of God, very, very few want to
be great in the kingdom of God, for so very, very few have faith in, and love
for, Jesus deep enough to make them long, desire, and will -- above all -- to cling
to Him through His earthly sufferings and thus share with Him in His heavenly
glory. Such a desire is fundamental, and
the lack of it cannot be compensated for easily or quickly, just as an athlete
cannot train without first having a good bone and healthy muscular structure to
begin working with.
At times this apparent lack of love for, commitment to,
Jesus may result from a relatively innocent and understandable fear of standing
out from friends for fear of losing their companionship as can still happen easily
enough with young people today. Again,
there are others ... good, Christian and Catholic people … who tend, in their spiritual
naivety and ill-conceived humility, to think along lines such as: “Who am I to
think that I can become anything special?” They are right to a certain degree,
of course; but they are also wrong, and much more seriously wrong, since God is
the supreme potter able to turn His clay into choice vessels as He wills.
There are yet others, who, amazingly, seem to think that to
aspire and try to aim higher in their spiritual life would somehow be
disloyalty to themselves: “This is my character, if I tried to be otherwise it
would not be the real me”!
Whereas the young persons’ fear of standing out alone, is,
as I said, understandable, bearing in mind the weakness of our human nature and
their lack of years, confidence, and experience; with the other two examples,
however, we find the Devil more insidiously at work, doing what he usually
tries to do: pass himself -- his suggestions and his impulses -- off as
virtuous, even holy.
People of God, all of us, like James and John, have faith
in Jesus, and all of us, on the basis of that faith, should want, indeed aspire,
to be true disciples of Jesus, longing to be as close to Him as possible here
on earth and for all eternity, because our supreme destiny is to be found, in
Him, as true children of our Father in heaven.
Such a desire for greatness is no disloyalty to our fellows, neither is
it a forgetting of our true situation, or false representation of our real selves;
rather, it is the only true recognition of and response to the fact that we are
created in the image and likeness of God, and that we have been redeemed by the
suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Our Lord for the glory of His
Father and the fulfilment of that, our God-given being and likeness.
As you heard in the second reading:
Since we have a great high priest
Who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our
confession.
Yes, let us -- out of love -- strive to follow where He has
gone before us. Do not let the Devil --
with weasel words of mock humility or serpentine suggestions of twisted
fidelity -- try to persuade you to idly and comfortably go through life like
everybody else; or, under the devilish pretext of remaining true to yourself, lead you to neglect the God-given
opportunity to discover and realise your only true self. God has, indeed, made you in His own image
and likeness, you are individuals, not like anyone else; Jesus has died for you
personally, He alone commands your supreme loyalty. He has risen and gone to heaven to prepare your
place in heaven: do not betray Him for the sake of what would be,
ultimately, a contemptible fear of standing out from others or a ludicrously
tragic self-deception trade-marked by Lucifer himself. Only when you strive to follow Jesus with
your whole heart will you find your true self, divinely commissioned before
time began; only when you commit yourself, with Jesus, to the Father, will you
become a member of the heavenly family with the hosts of saints and angels for
your true companions and enduring friends.
This living of the Christian life, this contentment with
Jesus above all, for the Father, might indeed bring the cross into our lives as
you have heard from today’s readings, but it will be a sharing in the Cross of
Jesus, our passport to real life (Romans 8:16-18):
The Spirit Itself bears witness
with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs
of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may
also be glorified with Him. I consider
that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory
to be revealed for us.
