You Do Not Know What You’re Asking

El Greco St. James

You do not know what you are asking. (Mark 10:38) [Spanish]

James and John requested thrones adjacent to Christ’s at the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus replied: You do not know what you are asking.

Did not know what they were asking. Probably the greatest understatement ever. After all, as we confess in our Creed, Christ, risen from the dead, sits at the right hand of the Father. To sit at Christ’s left, then, would mean taking the place of the heavenly Father Himself.

But the Lord did not despise His friends’ request. He recognized their love for Him, the love that moved them to want to sit close. If it’s wrong to want to be close to Christ for eternity, then we’re all in big trouble.

No, the Lord did not despise James and John for their ill-informed request. Nor did Jesus pedantically point out that He had put St. Peter in charge, not them.

Actually, in responding to James and John, Jesus did not get into the matter of hierarchy at all. Rather, He said: Yes, you will share my baptism and drink my chalice.

The Church has her hierarchy, just as the world has hers. We all have our particular lot in life. Envying someone else’s position never really did anyone any good. But, by the same token, ambition for success is hardly a sin in and of itself. Go for the Silver! Or: Go for the Bronze! Not good mottos. God made us for a reason, and we fulfill His plan by striving to fulfill all our potential. Ambition gets a lot of people out of bed in the morning.

El Greco St. John

But the Lord has provided a great leveler, when it comes to success in this world. Almighty God drives a kind of existential bulldozer, which always rolls towards us, drawing closer with every passing day. Someday this great leveling bulldozer will knock down all the hierarchies that this world has set up. Every “Hall of Fame” will lie in ruins, forgotten.

Right now, the angels see the heavenly hierarchy; they see the holiness of people’s souls. Someday the hierarchy of holiness will be the only pecking order left. Because the great bulldozer will have plowed us all into the grave.

One of Christ’s shortest parables: A man grew rich and planned to expand his barns to hold all his vast treasure. That night, he died. And the Lord had only two words for the smug, successful entrepreneur, who had been on top of the world: “You fool.”

Now, even after Jesus told James and John that they would share His baptism and drink His chalice, the brothers still did not grasp what the Teacher meant. After all, the Jewish rituals of that period involved a lot of ‘baptisms’–ritual cleansings prior to religious observances. And the Passover Seder involved the drinking of multiple ceremonial chalices.

James and John did not grasp that Christ’s “Baptism” was not a ritual ablution. The Lord meant His entire Paschal Mystery. Christ’s ‘chalice’ was the shedding of His Blood, during His bitter Passion and death.

To try to understand what Jesus meant when He said that James and John would indeed share His baptism and His chalice, we ourselves have to grasp that the word “Passover” does not fundamentally mean a ritual meal involving unleavened bread. No. The word “Passover” means: Christ passing over from mortal life to immortal glory. The true Passover is made through the door of death. None of our self-importance in this world ever fits through that door.

“You do not know what you are asking.” Quite the understatement, because: We do not know the glory that God has prepared for us. We do not know the joy and peace that even the lowest place in heaven affords. We do not know what resting for good really means–what it means to cease from striving after our ambitions; to cease from struggling and competing. We do not know what it means simply to flower fully forever. Heaven lies beyond our knowledge.

But not completely. Because Jesus has revealed heaven to us. We cannot see heaven from the inside, so to speak, but we can see it from the outside. Christ’s Sacred Heart is full of heaven. In Christ, we see what heaven does to the human soul. The Lord’s Jesus’ heavenly interior life made Him mild, humble, ready to serve. It made Him love others. It moved Him to give His life for the ones He loves.

It’s not that Christ didn’t fight during His pilgrim life; it’s not that He had no ambition. To the contrary, at crucial moments in His journey, we see His stern determination. He just never fought for low stakes. He never fought for the silly trophies of this world.

No. Christ’s ambition always was and always will be: life, eternal life. He fought not for earthly glory, but for the everlasting glory of God. Let’s strive for a share in that glory.

We can leave it up to our heavenly Father where exactly we ought to sit.

Non-Political Truths of Marriage

A marriage is a marriage because a man and a woman make vows to God. Getting married is, fundamentally, an act of faith in God. And getting married always involves not just the two individuals, but also their families, the children the Lord pleases to give them, and all the people who will relate to them thenceforward as a married couple. [SPANISH]

The idea that the laws of marriage could ever be the subject of political dispute? Marriage as a political hot potato? That strikes us Catholics as strange and shallow. Marriage is not a “political issue.” Marriage is what Jesus Christ said it is: 1. God made us male and female. 2. A man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh. 3. What God has joined together, let no man separate.

Marriage is not “political.” It is beautiful. Man and wife, united in an unbreakable bond, reflect the love between Christ and His holy People. Husband and wife, faithful through all trials, persevering through setbacks and defeats they never could have anticipated, but never giving up—that offers hope. That offers convincing testimony to the truth of the Catholic faith.

I don’t think I go too far when I say: The faithfulness of husbands and wives makes the world beautiful and trustworthy. Faithfulness made possible by the grace of God, delivered through the sacrament.

Marriage is not “political.” Marriage is spiritual. Discerning the will of God about marriage requires prayer and the regular, sustained practice of our religion. Remaining faithful in marriage requires prayer and the sustained practice of our religion.

And remaining faithful requires embracing the Cross. The world has never seen a marriage that didn’t involve a Via Crucis. If you won’t walk with Christ the Way of the Cross, don’t get married. That said, no one can get to heaven without walking the Via Crucis with Christ. So we all might as well prepare ourselves to follow the Way of the Cross, whether or not we have any thought of getting married.

Marriage is not “political.” But it is legal. Laws can cut like razors, both for good or ill, depending on your point of view. Without following the laws of marriage, you can’t obtain the sacramental grace of marriage. And no one loses the freedom to marry in a scenario in which the laws of marriage didn’t get followed.

Some people think the Church’s marriage laws are too strict, making it difficult to get married in church. Some people think they’re too lax, allowing for too many annulments. No one says that the laws are perfect. But they are fundamentally reasonable.

You have to be mature and clear-minded in order to bring about the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Once that happens, it lasts until death. But sometimes it doesn’t happen, even when a couple tries to make it happen. Because they didn’t meet the legal criteria.

Which means that there is nothing faithless or unspiritual about petitioning for an annulment when you have a solid case for obtaining one. And there’s nothing faithless or unspiritual about Church tribunals granting decrees of nullity in accord with the law.

That said, there certainly is nothing faithful or spiritual about the kind of pride that would lead someone to try to grant him- or herself an annulment. Or the kind of pride that would refuse to seek an annulment when the law would provide for one.

Marriage is not “political.” But, by the same token, it is also not eternal. Christ was made lower than the angels “for a little while.” A man and a woman get married, and live the Christian married life, until death do them part, beautifying the world at every step… But it all lasts only a little while. In the grand scheme of things.

Some choose not to marry because they have no faith and would rather just skate along. Some don’t marry because they won’t make a commitment to love like Christ. Or they don’t know how. These aren’t worthy reasons.

But some choose not to marry because eternal life beckons. Even now, the Kingdom of Christ the God-man beckons. Not marrying because of that doesn’t mean rejecting love. It means embracing the Love that made them male and female in the first place.

Death on the Sixth Commandment

We read at Holy Mass: A man shall cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh…No human being must separate what God has joined. (Mark 10:7-9)

Such ringing clarity about marriage comes as a wonderful antidote to news reports about transgender bathrooms. Economic and social revolutionaries can and do find inspirations in the words of Christ. But sexual revolutionaries run into a brick wall. Because Jesus of Nazareth was death on the sixth commandment.

Better to pluck out your eye than look at a woman lustfully. Better to cut off your hand than use it to sin. Lord Jesus revealed that when God spoke from Mount Sinai condemning adultery, He condemned every sexual thing—except the one, honest act that makes marriage marriage, through a lifetime of fidelity.

Now, we would be fools to think ill of sex. Our churches would be empty without it. The Lord’s severity hardly proceeded from fussy prudishness on His part. He was celibate, but no prude. To the contrary, when He spoke about sex, He evoked the Garden of Eden, where the original divine command resounded: Be fruitful and multiply!

But when it comes to the union of man and woman as one flesh, the holiness of Christ utterly prohibits anything cheap, anything fleeting or libidinously selfish. He chose us for ecstasy and communion that lasts forever; He offered His celibate body on the cross to consummate our everlasting marriage with God. There’s no room at the foot of His cross for anything other than chastity.

Doesn’t mean He won’t forgive our falls. He knows what Adam’s sin has done to our human powers of self-control. When we succumb to temptation, He picks us up and gives us a fresh start, helping us to pursue again the serenity of perfect sexual honesty. Christ never gets tired of pardoning us weak sinners when we repent.

But the idea that any fruitless, short-term sexuality could peacefully co-exist with the holiness of Christ? His own words utterly anathematize this. Following Jesus means believing wholeheartedly that sex is only for marriage, and marriage is for life.

Priesthood Anniversary Homily

I hate preaching about myself.  But today it seems like the Lord is practically begging me to do it.  Roman Missal has a special set of prayers for the priest to use, especially on his anniversary.  Usually I don’t use them, because I don’t like skipping any Easter-season prayers.  But this year, we had an unusually early Pentecost.  And, by pure God-incidence, the gospel reading at Holy Mass today includes:

There is no one who has given up houses, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age—with persecutions—and eternal life in the age to come.

I think we can say that most of us priests spent most of our twenties meditating on that verse—when we were getting ready to go to the seminary, and in the seminary.

For My sake.  Whatever we have given up, we have given up because of Jesus Christ.

Now, I don’t hold myself out as any kind of venerable philosopher or brave spiritual pilgrim.  I have enough trouble just answering all my e-mails in a timely manner.  But I can say that becoming a priest of the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood has been about: the meaning of life.  I don’t mind wearing black clothes, but that wasn’t the reason.

Let’s put it like this.  All of us receive a huge patrimony from the people that bring us into the world.  Our language, our manners, the food we get used to.  “Culture.”

All of this cultural identity gives meaning to life.  Family relationships, friendships, love, the importance of honesty, hope for a prosperous, peaceful, happy future.

But it’s not enough.  It doesn’t get you over the last, big hurdle, when it comes to finding meaning in life.  The last, big hurdle has multiple names, but they come down to the same thing in the end.  Death.  Solitude.  Silence.  The Unkown Foundation of all existence.

Jesus taught us to call The Unknown Foundation of all existence, the great silence, the unfathomable interior intimacy—He taught us to call Him “our Father.”  Jesus—the real person, living and very much in-touch with us.  He feeds us with His living Body and Blood, so that we can be sons and daughters of the heavenly Father, with Him.

I can honestly say:  When I was 21 years old, I became aware that the Blessed Sacrament really is God made flesh for our eternal salvation.  The basic Catholic dogma—the Real Presence—it is true.  And that makes everything else make sense.

I became aware of that, and I became a priest because of it.  I’m not particularly good at any of the pastoral things—leadership, virtue, etc.  But I can say Mass, in spite of all my faults and weaknesses.  And because of the Mass, life truly has meaning.  For me.  For all of us.

Bartimaeus Saw

The merciful Lord did not mind that Bartimaeus called Him “Son of David.” Bartimaeus could have said, “Son of God,” of course. But, by calling Christ “Son of David,” Bartimaeus hailed Him as the long-awaited Messiah, since “Son of David” was a title of the Savior Israel expected.

Whatever Bartimaeus meant by his salutation, the blind man certainly called out with real faith in his heart. Bartimaeus believed that he was speaking to the divine man. Bartimaeus believed Jesus could work a miracle. “Have pity on me, Son of David! I want to see.” And Bartimaeus must have called out eagerly, insistently–maybe even impertinently–since many rebuked him, telling him to zip it.

Why does St. Mark call Bartimaeus by name? Probably because some among Mark’s original readership knew who Bartimaeus was. People knew Bartimaeus’ background. And they knew the transformation he had undergone, when he met Christ. Bartimaeus had sat by the roadside begging, probably for years, eking out a wretched existence. Then this particular day came…

Most of us have eyes that work decently well. Mine struggle along with the help of the Coke bottles I wear on the bridge of my nose. But: isn’t it the case that we do not see the things we most want to see? What, after all, do we not see? Here’s a short list.

1) We do not see a united human race. We see a human race very much at odds with itself. We see a world where people kill each other, or ignore each other, or treat each other as cogs in an inhuman machine.

2) We do not see a leader we can really trust. We do not see anyone whose words communicate pure, unadulterated truth, and whose example follows his words in every way.

3) Above all: We see a world weighed-down by a long history of human sin, and we do not see a way out. Cam Newton has turned into a seriously good NFL quarterback. But can Cam Newton atone for all the centuries of human sin that have preceded us?

Before that particular day, Bartimaeus had languished in a blind rut. Each passing day meant another desperate struggle for survival, encountering unhappy people wandering aimlessly through life. Bartimaeus begged coins from them to keep from starving to death. We can only imagine that he endured this miserable existence for many long years.

If we ourselves consider solely the external appearances of this world, using these eyes we have, which for the most part work pretty well—if we walk solely by sight, in other words—we will find ourselves in every bit as much of a blind rut as Bartimaeus was, before that day when he met Christ. We can see a few things. But we cannot see what we most truly want to see. If we suffered as long as Bartimaeus, we might give up all hope.

But this earnest man Bartimaeus, blind though he was, recognized a new day when it came. He had languished long. But he heard that Jesus was coming, and the beggar knew: today is different. Today things could change for the better. He hollered “Son of David! Have pity on me. O divine Messiah! Have pity on me.”

Now, when the preacher says, “We’re all blind like Bartimaeus, unless we walk by faith in Jesus!” that sounds like kind of a cliché, a bromide. But, you know what? It’s true anyway.

Where is the Messiah? Where can we find the one who can unite all people, all the races and nations, in a bond of love? Without ancient hatreds and mistrust, without language barriers and mutual incomprehension, without alienation and hopeless anger?

Where can we find a leader whose word is truth and whose life unfolds with absolute honesty?

Where is our divine Lamb Whose blood can wash the world clean as new?

Where is the Messiah?

In faith, we cry: “Son of David! Have pity one us. We want to see.”

Jesus gave Bartimaeus his sight, because Bartimaeus believed. Bartimaeus believed in the Incarnation, believed that God stood there with him. And, can we not imagine that, when his eyes were opened, Bartimaeus saw the one thing he really wanted to see? He opened his eyes and saw the one thing that all of us truly long to see.

Bartimaeus, after all, never wound up watching a football game or going to a movie. He ever laid eyes on the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. He never watched Michael Jackson do a moonwalk.

But he saw the divine man. He saw the Creator with his own eyes. And Bartimaeus proceeded to follow Christ. Because he realized that there is actually only one cure for blindness. Not just ‘seeing.’ The cure for our human blindness is seeing the Messiah.

Lord, we believe! We believe You are God! Lord Jesus, we want to see You!

Ambition and Death

You do not know what you are asking. (Mark 10:38)

Lord Jesus told James and John that they did not know what they were asking, when they requested thrones adjacent to His at the coming of the kingdom.

The two Apostles did not know what they were asking. Probably the greatest understatement ever. After all, as we confess in our Creed, Christ, risen from the dead, sits at the right hand of the Father. To sit at Christ’s left, then, would mean taking the place of the heavenly Father Himself. Even a zealous and holy Apostle cannot possibly do that.

But the Lord did not despise His friends’ request. He recognized their love for Him, the love that moved them to want to sit close. If it’s wrong to want to be close to Christ for all eternity, then we’re in big trouble.

No, the Lord did not despise James and John for their ill-informed request. Nor did Jesus pedantically point out that He had put St. Peter in charge, not them.

No, in responding to James and John, Jesus did not get into the matter of hierarchy at all. Rather, He said: Yes, you will share my baptism and drink my chalice.

The Church has her hierarchy, just as the world has hers. We all have our particular lot in life. Envying someone else’s position never really did anyone any good. But, by the same token, ambition for success is hardly a sin in and of itself. Like the football dad in the Kia ad who changes his son’s trophy to ‘champs’ instead of ‘participant,’ because the boy’s team won every game. “Are we gonna end football games with hugs? No. No. No.”

It’s no sin in and of itself to have ambition. It’s no sin in and of itself to want to compete. But the Lord has provided a great leveler, when it comes to success in this world. Almighty God drives a kind of existential bulldozer, which always moves towards us, drawing closer with every passing day. Someday this great leveling bulldozer will knock down all the hierarchies of this world. Right now, the angels see the heavenly hierarchy; they can see the holiness of people’s souls. Someday the hierarchy of holiness will be the only pecking order left, because the great bulldozer will have plowed us all into the grave.

One of Christ’s shortest parables: A man grew rich and planned to expand his barns to hold all his vast treasure. That night, he died. And the Lord had only two words for the smug, successful entrepreneur, who had been on top of the world: “You fool.”

Even after Jesus told James and John that they would share His baptism and drink His chalice, the brothers still did not fully grasp what the Teacher meant. After all, the Jewish rituals of that period involved a lot of ‘baptisms’–ritual cleansings prior to religious observances. And the Passover Seder involved the drinking of multiple ceremonial chalices.

James and John did not grasp that Christ’s “Baptism” was not a ritual ablution. The Lord meant His entire Paschal Mystery. Christ’s ‘chalice’ was the shedding of His Blood during His bitter Passion and death.

To try to understand what Jesus meant when He said that James and John would indeed share His baptism and His chalice, we ourselves have to grasp that the word “Passover” does not fundamentally mean a ritual meal involving unleavened bread. No. The word “Passover” means: Christ passing over from mortal life to immortal glory. The true Passover is made through the door of death. None of our self-importance in this world ever fits through that door.

“You do not know what you are asking.” Quite the understatement, because: We do not know the glory that has been prepared for us. We do not know the joy and peace that even the lowest place in heaven affords. We do not know what resting for good really means–what it means to cease from striving, from struggling, from competing. We do not know what it means simply to flower fully forever. Heaven lies beyond our knowledge.

But not completely. Because Jesus has revealed heaven to us. We cannot see heaven from the inside, so to speak, but we can see it from the outside. Because Christ’s Sacred Heart is full of heaven. In Christ, we see what heaven does to the human soul. The Lord’s Jesus’ heavenly interior life made Him mild, humble, ready to serve. It made Him love others. It moved Him to give His life for the ones He loves.

It’s not that Christ didn’t fight during His pilgrim life; it’s not that He had no ambition. To the contrary, at crucial moments in His journey, we see His stern determination. He just doesn’t fight for low stakes. He doesn’t fight for the silly trophies of this world.

No. Christ’s ambition always was and always will be: life, eternal life. He has fought not for earthly glory, but for the everlasting glory of God. Let’s strive for a share in that glory. We can leave it up to our heavenly Father where exactly we ought to sit.

Morality How To’s

I prayed and pleaded, and wisdom came to me. (Wisdom 7:7)

Pope St. John Paul II wrote that Christ invites all of us to follow Him, just as He invited the Rich Young Man: Keep the Commandments. Give what you have to the poor, so that you will have treasure in heaven. And follow me.

Christ invites all of us to follow Him in this way. And by accepting this invitation, we can find what we call morality. We can live moral lives, upright lives.

Let’s focus on this crucial point. We cannot imagine that we are morally good first–and because we are so good, we get to be Jesus’ friends. No.

The Son of God—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—invites us to follow Him, and by following Him, we find out what “being good” actually means. By following Him, by making a purifying pilgrimage in His footsteps, by spending a lifetime studying Christ, so as to know Him, love Him, and imitate Him—in other words, by co-operating with Him, we can find the peace of a clear conscience.

Who doesn’t want to have a peaceful conscience? The kind of conscience that rests, and allows you to delight in simple pleasures, to listen to other people when they talk to you, to sleep well, to enjoy a baseball playoff game. If we really want to come to full-flower as people, we need untroubled consciences.

More than a hamburger, or a Ferrari, or a good-looking boyfriend or girlfriend–what we really want, above all, is the inner peace that comes from honesty and harmony with what is right. The Holy Catholic Church says: We can have this, provided we start by focusing our eyes on Jesus Christ Himself.

Not focusing on the Bible, per se—though of course we can’t focus our eyes on Christ without reading the Scriptures.

Not focusing on ‘moral positions’ in themselves. Though of course the Church takes moral positions, based on the life and teachings of Christ our Lord.

Not even focusing on the Pope or the Church Herself as an institution. After all, what is the first sentence of Pope Francis’ letter about the Joy of the Gospel? It is not, “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter me.” No: Pope Francis’ fundamental idea is: The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter…

Jesus.

So, three steps to morality:

1. Faith and prayer. We encounter Christ by faith, since He no longer dwells visibly on earth. We want peaceful consciences? Then let’s regularly do calisthenics of faith.

–Prayer to Christ first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

–“Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner,” all day long. Let’s make a resolution to say, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner,” more often than we look at our phones.

2. Receiving the sacraments as acts of Divine Mercy. Don’t get me wrong: A lot goes into having a beautiful, prayerful Mass. I certainly appreciate all the hard work that goes into it. I try myself to work hard to prepare. The Lord smiles on selfless Christians who volunteer to help at church.

But we have to remember always: Fundamentally, the Holy Mass is not us. If the Mass were just us, as Flannery O’Connor put it, “then to hell with it.” The Mass is: Jesus giving us Himself.
Which brings me to: Truly to experience the Holy Mass as an act of Divine Mercy means regularly experiencing the sacrament of Confession as an act of Divine Mercy.

“But, Father. I’m a good person. I don’t need to go to Confession!”

Really?

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been too long since my last Confession. I am one stubborn, proud, ungrateful wretch—who tends to forget how Jesus shed a lot of blood, and endured excruciating agony, and it wasn’t just for all the other people.

3. Which brings us to the final point I would like to try to make. Love. Morality really does fundamentally mean loving—loving God and loving other people. Love really is the law. That particular liberal shibboleth is actually true.

But the love in question, of course, is the love that proceeds from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the love that sees with Christ’s eyes. And we know that Christ hardly looks at sins being committed and says, “That’s fine.”

No. The Lord Jesus knew that the Rich Young Man in the gospel needed to change his life.

Christ saw the sinner, and loved him, and invited him: Come, sinner, follow me. I will teach you how to do good.

What God Has Joined Together

(Mark 10:9)

—

Let’s take one brief moment to consider some of the things the Church governs, and some that She does not. After all, the Church does not govern everything.

Church does not govern penalties in the NFL, for instance. You could read the Code of Canon Law cover-to-cover and find nothing about ‘holding’ or ‘ineligible man downfield.’ The Church does not govern parliamentary procedure in the U.S. Congress. No canon treats the filibuster. The Church does not grant patents or trademarks. And no priest or bishop would claim that his office qualifies him to judge a chili cook-off.

But: marriage is one of the things which the Church does govern. We believe in the separation of Church and state; we respect other Christian groups and other religions, also. But the Church does not hesitate to claim ultimate legal authority over holy matrimony, whenever at least one baptized person is involved.

This makes sense, after all, because marriage is inherently religious, and inherently communal. A marriage is a marriage because a man and a woman make vows to God. Getting married is, fundamentally, an act of faith in God. And getting married always involves not just the two individuals, but also their families, the children the Lord may someday give them, and all the other people who will relate to the couple thenceforward as a married couple.

The Holy Catholic Church never wanted marriage to become a political issue. The idea that marriage could even be “political”—the idea that people would get all worked-up over whether or not our Holy Father smiled at Kim Davis on the way to his car before Mass—the whole business of marriage as a political hot potato can only strike us as amusingly shallow. Marriage is not a political issue. Marriage is what Jesus said it is:

1. God made us male and female.
2. A man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
3. What God has joined together, let no man separate.

—

We should stop anthropomorphizing hurricanes with human names. It's exactly what the hurricanes WANT us to do.

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) October 1, 2015

Hard to disagree with my brother here. Nonetheless, we did pray hard yesterday to St. Therese, that she would implore St. Joachim to implore God Almighty to move Hurricane Joachim/Joaquin east. And it happened!

Solitude, Sin, and the Chalice

He walked ahead of the disciples, toward Jerusalem, and they were amazed and afraid. Why amazed and afraid?

They knew, but did not understand. They knew that the Lord, the Prince of Peace, full of unadulterated love and truth–they knew that He lived to fulfill His destiny. Doing the will of the Father inevitably would come to mean cruel suffering and death. An innocent lamb slaughtered.

The disciples knew all this, because He had told them. But they did not understand. Let’s try it on for size ourselves. He asks us, just as He asked James and John, “Can you drink the chalice that I must drink and undergo my baptism?”

Now, the irony of what Jesus goes on to say in this exchange offers us perhaps the greatest insight into the tenderness of His fatherly love.

He speaks here, of course, not with strangers, but with most-intimate friends. He has shared countless tender moments with James and John, as He has shared countless tender moments with us. Can you drink My chalice? They answer His question, “Yes, we can!” He knows perfectly well that No, they can’t.

When the time comes, when the vise tightens, when the accuser from hell heaps empty charges of evil and darkness against the true Light of good, when the Holy Face gets pummeled by buffets and spitting–at that moment, as we know, the hearts of these two friends did not prove themselves firm. When Jesus faced death, when He had to chose the truth over eating a meal or waking up in the morning ever again–He chose truth. –Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Most-High God?

James and John were standing with the rest of us then. Standing among the doubters, who wonder whether the Kingdom of Christ is real. When God was condemned to death, He stood utterly alone and friendless, with the entire human race arrayed with the accuser–a race that can’t, won’t believe.

But what did Jesus say to James and John? He said, Yes, you will share my chalice. My Father has assigned your places. All that must be done for you to take them is for me to die in unimaginable solitude. Then we can come together again. You, too, will fulfill the will of My father–with Me filling your souls with Myself.

The mystery of Christ’s utter solitude in His Passion. The mystery of our own helpless struggle with the evil angels of our nature. Faith, redemption, hope, and the future open up before us when these two dark pits meet. Then we greet the crucified Christ with adoring gratitude, begging Him, “Lord, I do believe! Let me come into Your kingdom with You!”

Christ’s Baptism and Ours

Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? (Mark 10:38)

The Lord Jesus asked the ambitious Apostles this question. When the Lord referred to “the baptism with which I am baptized,” what exactly did He mean?