29th Sunday in OT (Year B)
Is
53:10-11; Heb 4:14-16; Mark 10: 35-45
One
of the stories I would always love to tell is that of a story teller named J.
Allan Peterson. The story is about a boy who was consistently coming home late
from school. There was no good reason for his tardiness, and no amount of
discussion seemed to help. Finally, in desperation, the boy’s father sat him
down and said: “The next time you come late from school you are going to be
given bread and water for your supper—and nothing else. Is that perfectly
clear, son?” The boy looked straight into his father’s eyes and nodded. He
understood perfectly.
A few
days later the boy came home even later than usual. His mother met him at the
door but didn’t say anything. His father met him in the living room, but he
didn’t say anything either. That night, however, when they sat down together at
table, the boy’s heart sank down to his feet. His father’s plate was filled
with food, and his mother’s plate was filled with food. But his own plate
contained only a single slice of bread. Next to his plate was a lonely glass of
water. The boy’s eyes stared first at the bread, then at the glass of water.
This was the punishment his parents had warned him about. To make matters
worse, tonight he was absolutely starving.
The
next thing happened was the striking point of the story. The father looked at
the boy, then, quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself.
And then, He took his own plate.. and put it in front of the boy. The boy
understood what his father was doing. His father was taking upon himself the
punishment that he, the boy, had brought upon himself by his own delinquent
behavior.
That
story illustrates perfectly what Jesus meant when he said in today’s gospel, “The
son of man…came…to give his life to redeem many people”. Jesus came into
the world to do for us what the father did for his son. He came to pay the
price for our sinfulness. And the price he paid was his own death on the cross.
That was Jesus’ mission and today we who are gathered here are also called for
a mission—to bring people to God and God to people, to proclaim the Good News
of Jesus Christ, to witness the redeemed life we have in Jesus. It is by no way
easy, which is why Jesus in today’s Gospel asked James and John the sons of
Zebedee, “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”
To drink
from the cup that Jesus himself must drink, is to carry out the mission of
Christ with full freedom and also full understanding of it. The
message of our Holy Father Benedict XVI for this 80th Mission Sunday put it very clearly: To carry out the
mission, i.e. "..being missionaries means stooping down to the needs of
all, especially those of the poorest and most destitute people.. to seek not
our own interests but the glory of the Father and the good of our neighbor alone.
Being missionaries means loving God with all our hearts, even to the
point, if necessary, of dying for him". And all these are summed up in the
theme for this Mission Sunday—“Charity:
Soul of the Mission”.
It is
with the same charity that the future Messiah accepted to suffer and offer
himself as a sin-sacrifice for mankind, as prophesied in the first reading. It
is also with the same charity that the author of the letter to the Hebrews, in
the second reading, called upon the Hebrews to stand steadfast in the faith of
Jesus Christ.
Let us pray that as we celebrate the Eucharist, the fullness expression
of God’s charity to us, God’s grace will renew us and give us courage to
rightly answer the question of Christ, “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”