Homily for Wednesday of the 2nd Week of Lent

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/022008.shtml

+jmj

If you love those who love you, what is so unusual about that? Even the pagans do the same. This line from the Sermon on the Mount gives us a summary of the point of today’s Gospel. The mother of the sons of Zebedee is looking for some assurance that her sons will be loved in a unique and preferential way by Jesus. Yet Jesus tells them the opposite. He says that he came to give his life not only for those who love him in return, but for many, or as we say at the consecration – this blood is shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven. Jesus does not love his faithful disciples like James and John more than the lost sheep who do not recognize him or who choose not to follow him. It is not his to decide who will sit at his right and at his left, or to determine who loves him most. Instead, his mission instead is to love everyone to the end, and to give his life as a ransom for all, and in so doing to teach us how to love not only those who love us, but how to love unusually – how to love divinely – by loving our enemies to the point of placing our lives in their hands.
Jeremiah shared in the Lord’s cup of suffering. It was not enough for him to announce his prophetic message; he was allowed by God to be persecuted by those whom he was trying to save. The same with our Lord, the same with James and John, who did indeed eventually drink the cup that Jesus drank, who made up in their own lives what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the salvation of all. If we are to love as Jesus loves, our goal is not simply to develop a mutual admiration society that loves Jesus in the same way we do, and to grant special honors to those who seem to love Jesus best. No, we must go beyond this, and love those who hate Jesus, and then we will be children of our heavenly Father. Blessed are you – happy are you - when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven!

+m