Feast of Saint James the Apostle
Scripture:
2 Corinthians 4:7-15
Matthew 20:20-28
Reflection:
A Gospel for Today
Sometimes when directing a retreat or parish mission I’ll give a talk on the difficult passages in Sacred Scripture. In last Tuesday’s Gospel, for example, when folks tell Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are outside and they want to speak with you,” Jesus responds, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Pointing to his disciples, he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters.” Jesus challenges his listeners to become his family and sets a new criterion for becoming the Family of God — viz., doing the will of God. Jesus is not denigrating his mother; rather, he is challenging us to extend that love, to stretch our boundaries of care and compassion.
And along with other passages like our Lord’s mandate to “love our enemies,” today’s Gospel offers yet another similarly difficult challenge: Jesus instructs his disciples, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be the servant of all.”
Recent news footage has me pondering. We older folks might remember when, in August of 1988, George H. W. Bush accepted his party’s nomination for President. He thundered, “But where is it written that we must act… as if we do not care, as if we are not moved? Well, I AM moved. I want a kinder and gentler nation.”
And reading several responses of world leaders to President Biden’s decision last Sunday to end his campaign for President, I was especially touched as I watched former President Bush’s granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager speak eloquently on Monday. “President Biden reminds me a little bit of my grandfather, who, I’ll never forget when in 1992, he worked so hard and he wasn’t elected and he was crushed,” she recounted. But at the end of his term of office he hand-wrote on White House stationery a letter to President Clinton, seeped in wisdom and advice and encouragement, which went around on the Internet but basically the end of it was, ‘You are my president now, and today I’m rooting for you.’”
May I learn to serve and not be served, “to wash other’s feet,” to love enemies… for truly God’s Kingdom is kinder and gentler.
Fr. Jack Conley, CP, is the local superior of St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.