Fr Billy Swan
Dear friends. Have you ever found yourself praying with words something like these: ‘Lord, please give me what I want’; ‘Lord please meet my expectations, thank you’; ‘Lord, bless these plans that I have already made’. Now I know the Lord gave us permission to ‘ask and we shall receive’ but praying this way is praying in the wrong way.
This is the spirit that James and John approach Jesus today. They are telling Jesus what he must do which is always a bad idea! They basically asked Jesus to make them Taoiseach and Tanaiste in his kingdom of glory that they understood to be a worldly kingdom. And so, they were looking for honour and power – two of the classical substitutes for God himself. With typical gentleness, Jesus uses this moment to teach his disciples that his kingdom is all about service – that God is at the service in truth and love of the people he has called and chosen. For Jesus’ audience at the time, this was a shocking reversal of what they always believed – namely that we are God’s servants and not the other way round. But here Jesus made it clear that he, who had come in the person of God, had come ‘not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’.
To serve is to love and to love is to go out of ourselves on mission. We love by serving. This connection between loving and serving is seen at the Last Supper when Jesus showed what his whole life was about on the night before it was to end on Good Friday. On that first Holy Thursday, Jesus took on the role of a servant and washed the disciples’ feet as a sign of his service and to show ‘just how perfect his love was’. St Thomas Aquinas famously defined love as ‘WILLING THE GOOD OF THE OTHER AS OTHER’.
What Thomas meant was that if you love someone then everything thing you say and do serves their good. And the good I do for them is for their good, not for mine. This definition of love by Thomas roots the act of loving in the will as a decision and as a habit. This is in contrast to many modern definitions of love as dependent on feelings and emotions. Now true love can indeed produce lots of feelings and emotions, many of which are joyful and beautiful but true love does not depend on feelings. That is why love and service are so closely tied. If love is willing the good of the other as other, then to serve is to move to meet the needs of others before us.
It is this spirit of service that keeps families and societies united. We think here of parents and their service of their children; of Gardai, teachers and other public servants. We think of our healthcare workers and the service they provide. This is also the spirit of service that is meant to be at the heart of priesthood and religious life. People whose lives are about willing the good of the other and serving that good every day, in Jesus’ name and after his example.
Although they later became saints, James and John were flawed characters because they wanted power and honour for themselves to inflate they own egos and pride. Such ambition is dangerous for it seeks power and honour for its own sake. Such ambition is very destructive – we think of fictional characters like Macbeth and real life characters like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
I conclude by pointing out a wonderful piece of Gospel irony. James and John asked to be at Christ’s right and left when he came into his kingdom. When Jesus did come into his kingdom of glory wearing his crown made of thorns, the people on his right and on his left were not James and John but two thieves. The last shall be first and first shall be last. On this Mission Sunday and in this week, let us content ourselves by being humble servants of charity and truth to all, in Jesus name. Amen.
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