Wednesday of the
Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
(I Peter 1:18-25; Mark 10:32-45)
The woman is taking care of her comatose son. She has the daunting responsibility of caring
for a person in a persistent vegetative state.
She does not complain. She only wants
her other children to grow up with s similar awe of human dignity. The woman is drinking from the same chalice
that Jesus refers to in today’s gospel.
James and John make an especially bold request of Jesus. They want to serve as his chief
administrators in the kingdom that he is inaugurating. The Lord does not admonish them for their
ambition. He only warns them that the positions
they seek entail intense suffering as well as supreme glory.
Nobody should want to suffer. It is an evil that is rightly avoided when
possible. However, often enough we
should engage suffering as both a responsibility and a way to our ultimate goal
in life. When we willingly care for the
sick, the aged, and the disabled, we give the same witness that Jesus asks of
James and John. We drink from his
chalice. We secure a place in eternal
life.
