Drinking from Jesus' cup

Feast of St. James: 2 Cor 4.7-15 and Matthew 20.20-28
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great, Irving, TX

Listen to this homily here!

Living in a democracy founded on the philosophical principles of Enlightenment Europe, I’m not sure we have much experience in this country with our rulers lording their authority over us. At least none of our experiences, if we’ve had them, measure up much, I bet, to the sort of oppressive suffocation of the human spirit I witnessed in communist China in 1990. Every second guarded against suspicion. Every word crafted to fit ideology. It seemed that nothing escaped the black-hole gravity of the state’s need to master its own people, making them servants by birth, accidental slaves to the political and economic jackboots of leftist Fascism and collectivist poverty. Now, I doubt the mother of the sons of Zebedee is hoping that Jesus will give her sons this kind of absolute power. But, like most of modern citizens of the Enlightened world now, she was probably thinking then, “Given the choice: it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” It is better to be the master than the servant. Jesus has a slightly different idea for his church.

Jesus says that the great ones among the Gentile rulers make their authority over their people felt. Then he says, “…it shall not be so among you.” Greatness in the Body will be determined by one’s willingness to be a slave in the service of others. Authority will flow from servanthood not heredity or wealth or connections but from following Christ’s destiny as the final servant of all in his sacrifice on the cross. He says, “[I] did not come to be served but to serve and to give [my] life as a ransom for many.” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained;…always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus…so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

To carry the dying of Christ is to carry his last act as a slave sent to serve. To manifest in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus is to take on a life of servitude to others. We are to witness as the apostle did—to death, if necessary. We are to stand up and serve even when perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, b/c though we maybe troubled by enemies, we are not driven to despair; we are not abandoned; we are not destroyed. In fact, we serve, we witnesses against persecution and the darkness of sin, “knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us […] in his presence.”

In Lumen gentium our bishops teach us that the People of God is one, “…sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity…[we] are all 'one' in Christ Jesus…”(n. 32). And one in Christ, we have the same vocation to service in the Body and out, to the Church and to the world, and though the practicalities are different for each according to his or her ministry, the service you render is rendered as Christ for Christ—by you, a member of his body, and in his name.

Sounds good. What’s the catch? No catch, just a question: Jesus asks you, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”

Pic credit: Paul Soupiset