The Cup That I Drink October 22

But the LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity. Isaiah 53:10

“Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” Mark 10:38

Piety

Let us pray. God, your only Son gave his life as a ransom offering for our sins. Please repay him with the vision to see his descendants in a long life, so that your will can be accomplished through him and the mission he prepared and assigned to each of us. Through his suffering, your servant set right the lives of sinners throughout time by bearing our guilt before you. Because Jesus surrendered himself to death and was counted among the wicked, he has taken away our sins and won pardon for our offenses. Help us now to take on the challenge of discipleship and pass on your love and wisdom to all those we meet. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/102206.shtml

Sometimes, we come across a passage in the Bible that just takes time to read again and again. Isaiah 53:10 is one such passage for me.

But the LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity.

But the LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity.

But the LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity.

No matter how many times you read it, the verse still comes out the same. The God that we address who is full of kindness and gentleness was pleased to crush his own son in infirmity.

“Pleased” seems like such an awful emotion. Why would Isaish (or his translators) choose that word? What parent would not be torn into peices watching his or her child suffer through even a fraction of the pain and humiliation of the Crucifixion? Who would be "pleased" to watch that happen?

Jesus, the innocent one, the Anointed One, made amends on behalf of us, the guilty, who have come before his time, during his time and after his time on earth. As written in Isaiah 53:5, “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.” His blood was shed for all of us.

His baptism, foretold by Isaiah, is also foretold by Jesus while among the disciples before the Crucifixion. Jesus’ baptism is to be his crucifixion and death for the salvation of the human race.

The cost of discipleship as requested by James and John for a share in the glory must involve sharing in the suffering of the Innocent One.

Last week we were asked "What are you willing to give up for Christ?" This week, the question is expanded with force – “What are you willing to take on for Christ?” The cross is the way to glory. By His answer to James and John, we come to know that the road to discipleship must, out of necessity, involve sharing in Jesus' sufferings, the endurance of tribulation and suffering for the gospel.

Whatever we decide to take on for Christ, does not directly lead to reward. Jesus doesn’t promise us a reward because that honor is beyond his power to bestow. The authority of assigning places of honor in the kingdom is reserved to God. Instead, Jesus issues the challenge and sets the stage for our living one earth amongst each other.

Whatever authority is to be exercised by disciples must, like that of Jesus, be rendered as service to others rather than for personal advancement. The service of Jesus is his passion and death for the sins of the human race. The riches of “inheritance” that Luke wrote about earlier this week has changed into a “ransom.” We are kidnapped by the tendency to sin. God, who values all of our lives equally, sent his Son, the Son of Man, to serve us and to give up His life “as a ransom for many.”

Inheritance implies receiving something with out personal cost. When we inherit something, the cost of it was born by the person who passes it on to us. What we receive will be a ransom for what we have given up.

That gift is God’s love, wisdom and fire. We must take such gifts and pass them on. Christian society, Jesus tells us, must be different. No longer will leaders exert authority over the people. Jesus teaches that “It shall not be so among you.” Instead, leaders will be the servants of the people. Passing on to others what the leaders in other societies would hoard for themselves.

Jesus asks this of us, not because it is easy. He asks this precisely because it is hard. But he doesn’t ask anything of us that He was not willing to do Himself. As St. Paul remind us when writing to the Hebrews, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”

Action

Cursillo portrays Christianity in pretty rainbow colors most of the time. “Be a friend. Bring a friend to Christ.”

However, we never get a rainbow without going through a storm. Without action, without tough love, the tripod will not stand on two legs alone.

Maybe we can not all take on the life of a monastic or the life of the clergy and religious orders of women and men. We can all do something around the corner, around the country or around the world.

This week, Fr. John Dear, S.J., writes in his column about his relationship with Henri Nouwen.[1] He explains that while we all read a lot if his books, “Few realize the full spectrum of his spirituality.”

While we are all familiar with (perhaps guilty of?) upward mobility, Fr. Dear writes that Henri was more concerned with “downward mobility.” Dear notes Henri’s “knack for walking away from positions of prestige. Quite an auspicious beginning for Henri -- teaching assignments at Notre Dame and then the divinity schools at Yale and Harvard. But he had a conscience, and it bothered him. He knew the Gospel summons toward "downward mobility," solidarity with the poor. And thus he slipped off the chains of the tenure track.”

Today Jesus asks us if we are ready to be baptized with his baptism, to drink the cup he drinks. What are you willing to take up for Jesus? How will we answer that question in order to “please” God?

[1] http://ncrcafe.org/node/542