And Jesus answering, said: You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? They say to him: We can. (Matthew 20:22, D-R)
This is amazing, that James and John reply, "We can"--for James and John are not naive here. This verse comes after Our Lord explains to them how the Son of Man must be betrayed, mocked, and crucified. Do not these two apostles know what He means when he asks, "Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?" If it were something easy and pleasurable, He need not ask the question, for we can always accept what we like. No, it was clear what "this chalice" meant: suffering and pain. Normally, we are very afraid of suffering and pain, and the Apostles were no exception. These two, however, following their mother's audacious example, aimed high in Christ. We have to have the same hope in Christ to say, "I can," when He asks us, as He surely will, to share the same chalice.
3 comments:
I always think about tradition having it that James was one of the first Apostles to be martyred, and John lived out his years to their natural course. It is believed the latter occurred because John was entrusted with the Blessed Mother and thus he was spared. And why was James the first? Was it because of this gospel exchange? There is so much to mull over in the gospels!
Totally! And yesterday I heard a terrific homily about "whispering" (custody of the mouth) in which the priest brought in how St. John always directed his questions to Our Lord whereas the other disciples did not always do that and whispered among themselves. I thought it was so great the point about St. John always taking every question or difficulty directly to Jesus. Was John perhaps allowed to live longer because He lived so close to Our Lord that it wasn't so much of a privation? I suppose the same question applies to Our Lady. Do you know, does tradition say how old Our Lady was when she was assumed? I think a lot of the Apostles were present, right, including St. John?
I have not heard how old Our Lady was when she was assumed into heaven. Michael O'Brien has a wonderful rendition of the event in his book "Father Elijah", which I would highly recommend to you. As a interesting aside, St. Thomas was supposedly late to the Blessed Mother's side, too late to see her. It is reminiscent of his missing the first appearance of our Lord to the Apostles after the Resurrection. St. Thomas is one of my favorite apostles, he seems so human!
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