Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 146

Can you drink the cup that I drink

or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" 

They said to him, "We can." 

Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink,

and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;

but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give

but is for those for whom it has been prepared." 

The Evangelist Saint Mark uses heavy, and very intentional, irony with this story of two disciples asking the Lord if they might sit on his right and on his left when he comes into his glory. 

We hear that expression repeated twice in the Second Gospel to drive home the foolishness of their request. First, Jesus repeats their words, "...to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared." That seems to allow room for the gentlemen to hope they might yet be chosen. 

But, five chapters later, Saint Mark tells us, "With him they crucified two revolutionaries, one on his right and one on his left." 

Thinking to promote their personal careers in the Kingdom of God, the disciples have asked to share in the Lord's unspeakable suffering. Although he cannot bestow those honored places on Zebedee's sons, the Lord does promise them that their request will nonetheless be satisfied, 

The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.

The words are again cryptic, as we discover in the fourteenth chapter. As we go with him to the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he died, and listen to his prayer, he will speak of the cup he must drink. 

Jesus advanced a little way from his disciples. His knees buckled in sheer human terror as, "...he fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”

The Lord had spoken only recently of a cup, when 

...he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.

And then he added, "Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” True to his word, when he was offered a cup of wine laced with myrrh, apparently to ease his suffering, he refused. 

We hear the insistent demand of Jesus at every mass, 

Take this, all of you, and drink from it; for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. 

As we drink this cup, and eat his flesh, we remember that we too must carry our crosses and share his cup of suffering. 

Today’s gospel also remembers the Lord’s other question, “Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" 

They said to him, "We can." 

And Jesus promised them, “...and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.

In Saint Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus cry out, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!” 

I believe it was these words about his baptism, and his command to eat my body and drink my blood which weighed most heavily upon the Lord as he entered Gethsemane. He knew what was happening. But this was not by divine sonship. It was the knowledge of any one who can see what is happening without preferring what they want to see.

The Carmelite Theresa Benedicta of the Cross knew she would not long survive when she registered as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Etty Hillesum, waiting with other Jews in an internment camp, knew there was no help coming from Britain or the United States. Father Maximilian Kolbe knew he would die when he volunteered to take another man’s place. The Spirit of Truth guided their thoughts, bypassing every temptation to expect or want something else. Jesus did not need to hear the shouts of the mob in the pitch darkness of Gethsemane to know they were coming for him.  

Once the Lord had said, "This is my body;""This is my blood;" and “Do this in memory of me!” there could be no turning back. As Saint Francis would say a thousand years later, “This is what I want with all my heart!”  But he still had time to collapse in utter terror, pray that this cup be taken from him, and receive reassurance. 

So what finally happened to the sons of Zebedee? Perhaps the Evangelist already knew how they died when he wrote this story of their foolish, impulsive, and prophetic petition. James was the first apostle to die, as Saint Luke tells us in his Acts of the Apostles. Herod the tetrarch had him arrested and beheaded. John also might have died already, although an ancient tradition says he was tested in many ways before he died of old age. 

However, despite the Lord’s cryptic prophecy about the violent death of James and John, his next words concern the crosses we must bear and the kind of death we must endure: 

"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles

lord it over them,

and their great ones make their authority over them felt. 

But it shall not be so among you.

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. 

Everyone, sooner or later, takes their places at the right and left hands of Jesus as he dies on the cross. We suffer with Christ as we are baptized and join the Church. It’s a grave risk for it’s sometimes embarrassing, sometimes difficult, and sometimes downright painful to be Catholic. Many people swear they would never join an organized religion because it’s just too complicated, demanding, and sometimes impossible to stand by everything the Church says, and does and represents. But, as Catholics, we support one another through hard times and good times. We make sacrifices; we look for ways to put ourselves out for others; we work for the common good. 

Everyone of us knows that my life is not about me. For neither the Son of Man nor his disciples come to be served. We come to serve and to give our lives as a ransom for many.