OCTOBER 21st. TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Gospel: Mark 10:35-45
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
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This Sunday’s Gospel challenges us to forego our own desires and aspirations, and to conform ourselves to the will of God for each of us. It highlights the fact that our prayer tends to consist in what we want the Lord to do for us, rather than being a process of conforming ourselves to what He wants for us. It challenges us to allow our desires and aspirations to be “baptized” with the baptism that Christ himself undergoes. Instead of viewing life as a process of pursuing our own desires and aspirations, we must be ready to accept the will of the Father for each of us. The acceptance of this will, the drinking of the chalice that He prepares for us, will ironically lead to the very glory that James and John aspire after.

The Gospel is divided into two parts: an incredible-sounding request by James and John, and a teaching from Jesus that is directed to all of the disciples

The Gospel this Sunday is divided into two scenes. Firstly, we have the request by James and John that they be given seats beside Christ when he comes into his glory. Secondly we have a teaching from Jesus that is directed at all of the disciples. Normally the focus is placed on the second part of the Gospel and the assertion by Jesus that he did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. In this assertion Jesus gives a statement of his mission. A ransom was the sum that had to be paid in order to obtain freedom for a slave. We are the slaves and Jesus must pay for our freedom with his blood.

Much of our prayer resembles the petition made by James and John

The second part of the Gospel, thus, contains something of the greatest importance and it normally becomes the focus of all of our attention. Let us return to the first part of the Gospel, however, and consider the request made by James and John. “Master, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you”. What a remarkable statement! The Lord must do what I want him to do! At first the assertion by James and John seems ridiculous, but, if we think about it, this is the way that each of us prays most of the time. This is the way that each one of us tends to approach God. We present him with petitions and expect him to do what we want. Does it ever occur to us that prayer should be a process of trying to discern what God wants for us, and that this is much greater than what we want for ourselves?

Jesus works through our desires, selfish though they may be. The challenge is to discern what is valid in those desires

But God is good and patient, and is willing to travel with us on the road that we choose to go. Instead of rebuking James and John, Jesus simply says, “You do not know what you are asking”. Then he asks them a number of questions: “Can you drink the chalice that I must drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I must be baptized?” Jesus is willing to work with what the disciples offer him. What is present in the hearts of James and John? There is a desire, and a great willingness for that desire to be realized. In this frantic quest, something good must be present. In all of our desires there is something good, confused aspirations for things that have genuine value. As Jesus says, we don’t know what we are looking for. We don’t know what we have in our hearts; we do not discern which parts of our desires are good and which parts must be corrected or abandoned. When we look back on our lives, we can see that many times in the past we have desired things that were useless or inappropriate. The whole art of advertising consists in making us want things that we do not need, and to make us feel frustrated or dissatisfied with what we already have. This mechanism of cultivating useless desires and making them into absolutes is all too active in the human heart. If we make our desires absolute goals then we ruin our lives. If our existence consists in pursuing what we ourselves want, then we will always be frustrated with life.

Our desires must be “baptized”, immersed in a reality created by God that frustrates our selfish inclinations and shows us a better way

Jesus shows us a different way. This way involves drinking the chalice that he drinks and being baptized with the baptism with which he is baptized. What does this mean? The chalice is the chalice that the Father gives, and for Jesus it appears in his Passion. God has a design for each of us, a chalice that we must drink. This requires laying our own will aside and learning to do the will of someone else, the will of God. Our desires, therefore, must be subjected to the traumatic encounter with a reality that is different to what we would like it to be. For example, a person might go into a marriage with particular desires or expectations, but once inside he is “baptized” into a reality that is very different to those expectations. He is immersed in a reality in which selfish desires are frustrated or negated.  At this point he has a choice to make: to allow himself to be corrected and formed by reality, or to remain stubbornly committed to pursuing his own desires. As a result, he can start to hate the marriage that he has in the name of the marriage that he desires, or he can learn to grow. He can learn to discover that the place that he thought he was reserving for himself in life is different to the place that God is preparing for him, and that that which God is creating is much more beautiful. When a desire of ours is frustrated we are challenged to discover that part of the desire that remains standing, the part that remains valid, that which the confrontation with reality has not negated. Once we drink the chalice of Christ, once we try to follow his paths, once we enter into the baptism with which he is baptized, then we discover that the Lord leads us to glory after all, but along his ways. In fact, Jesus says to James and John that they will indeed drink that chalice, they will indeed become something extraordinary, something whose true significance they had not understood at all when they asked to share in his glory.

The disciples are asked to go from the state of viewing reality as something that serves them to the state of being able to serve others freely. Only he who serves freely is free from the state of slavery. The “master” who demands to be served is a complete slave to worldly things.

This is the key for understanding the second part of the Gospel. The disciples must go through a process in which the unworthy elements in their desires are negated. They go from the state of wishing to be served by reality, from viewing reality as something that exists as a function of their desires and aspirations, to the state of willing service that, paradoxically, allows them to share in the power of the Son of Man. The Son of Man has the greatest power of all, the power to love, the capacity to serve, the capacity to know how to give one’s life. Only he who knows how to truly give truly possesses that thing. I cannot give an object that is the property of another. If I am fearful of giving something, this indicates that the object is not truly mine. It indicates that the object possesses me and not me it. Only he how knows how to give his life is authentically in possession of his life. Only the Son of Man, who is eternity, has the capacity to give his essence in an absolute way. We are asked to participate in this giving, in this act of liberty that proves that we are no longer slaves dominated by worldly masters. He who serves freely is free from slavery. He who demands to be served demonstrates his complete slavery to worldly things.

This Gospel presents us with a chalice that we must drink and a baptism into which we must be baptized. When we start to drink that chalice, we begin to discern the hidden truth that lies buried in our desires; we begin to discover a profound capacity that lies hidden inside each of us, the capacity to live as children of God, the capacity to follow the exact way taken by Jesus himself, and to be able to give our lives for others.