Peace be with you. Friends, I love the Gospel
for this weekend because it's so challenging. And I'll tell you the truth
—this Gospel often comes to my mind when I'm doing my
holy hour in the morning, and I'll tell you why. In those moments,
when I look at the Lord, I say,
"Lord, please give me what I want." And I think we all fall
in that habit in prayer. "Just give me what I'm asking for." Here's why I think
of this Gospel. We hear James and John,
the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do
for us whatever we ask of you." Now, may I suggest,
we are in, right off the bat here,
very bad spiritual space. That's why I think of this when
I move into bad spiritual space, when we start telling God, “here's what you
need to do for me.” So ipso facto,
you're in a bad place when you're
praying that way. The proper biblical
attitude is always, "Speak, Lord.
I'm listening. It's always, “not my will,
but your will be done." Or, what I do when I
catch myself saying, “Lord, please give me
what I want,” is I try constantly
to change it to, “Lord, please give me
what you want for me.” See, James and John here are in
bad space because they're saying our egos are the criterion. Our egos are determining
here what's good and bad. And so give us what we want. Real prayer,
the real spiritual life, is always about a de-centering,
off of the ego onto God. Not about us,
it's about God. Now Jesus indulges them,
like okay, tell me what you are
demanding that I do for you. And they say,
"Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right
and the other at your left." Okay. Now within their Jewish framework,
it makes some sense. They're at this point
convinced Jesus is the Messiah. And so the Messiah is
meant to be the king who's going to reign over
the twelve tribes of Israel. And then by extension, he'll be the Lord
of all the nations. That's their expectation. And so they're just saying,
“Hey Lord, when you come into
this glorious state, could we be at your right
and your left as your kind of
prime ministers?” They want, in a word,
power and honor. Okay. Are power and honor in
themselves bad things? No. Look at power,
first of all. We say God's all-powerful. So I mean, power can't be
in itself a bad thing. And then think of anyone
in human history who's ever accomplished something
impressively for the good. They are people that to some
degree had the reins of power, because power just means the
capacity to make things happen. I can make things happen
if I have sufficient power. Well, that's true of all the
good things that have happened. I mean, just think
of Abraham Lincoln, one of my great heroes. I mean, made all kinds
of good things happen, including freeing the enslaved. Would have meant Lincoln
had to seize the reins of power at some point. He had to get involved in kind
of grubby Illinois politics. And he had to,
to some degree, kind of get down and
dirty and all that. Okay. But he needed the reins of
power to affect certain goods. Churchill had to work his
way through the complexity of the British political system
to come finally to the top of the greasy pole so at a
key moment in human history, he could have
the reins of power. Thank God.
Thank God. He held off this Nazi tyranny
and saved Western civilization. Well, that's because he
was a person of power. Look in the more
spiritual order too. Don't think for a second that
Mother Teresa didn't have power and didn't know it, and
didn't know how to use it. Anyone that knew Mother Teresa
—I never knew her personally, but I know several people that
did and had dealings with her. She was well aware of the
fact that precisely as this deeply honored figure,
she had a lot of power. She could make things happen. And she didn't hesitate to use
her spiritual power to convince cardinals and archbishops and
popes to get things done. Look at a Mother Cabrini,
another hero of mine, a great saint. Little lady,
but boy was she powerful, and she knew it. And she got things
done because of it. Maybe the best example in
our time, John Paul II. He didn't have tanks and armies,
but by God, he had power. When he comes to Poland in
1979 and he gives that famous speech in Victory square,
and he inspired the people to chant, “we want God, we want God,”
for fifteen minutes. He was, and he knew it,
he knew what he was doing. He was using his power
to effect a great good. In fact, the fall
of the Soviet Union, the breakup of the Communist
empire in that part of the world without a shot being fired,
was because of this very spiritually powerful man. My point again is power is
not in itself a bad thing. Even asking God for power,
not bad in itself, but we got to see,
there's a caution. Now you might say James and
John are looking for power. We want to be at
your right and left. And they're also
looking for honor. That's a deep desire
of the human heart, is to be honored,
to be thought highly of, to have title and
prerogative and position. For people to say,
“Ah, look at that guy. Oh, the title that he has.”
Honor. Is honor itself a bad thing?
Well, no. I mean, we say God is honored. We honor the saints. We honor especially
the Blessed Mother. Thomas Aquinas put it this way:
“Honor is the flag of virtue.” With typical Thomistic
pith he expresses that. There's a great virtue,
a great good; well, I'm going to
put a flag on it. I'm going to honor that person,
so I draw attention to that person's virtue.
Good. Nothing wrong with that.
God is honored. The saints are honored.
The Blessed Mother is honored. What's the problem? Now, here we come to
the neuralgic point. When I ask for these
things in the wrong way and according to the wrong spirit,
I wreak havoc. The trouble here with James
and John is not so much what they're asking for,
it's the spirit in which they're asking for it. Lord, give us what we want. In other words, their egos
are now the criterion. Oh, give me power that my
ego might be aggrandized. Oh, give me honor that my
ego might be puffed up. Now we got serious trouble,
and I mean serious trouble. Look up and down the centuries. I mean, look through
the history books, look in the great
literature of the world. What do we find? Loads and loads of examples of
people who sought power in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. And they in very short
order produced chaos around themselves
and you see why. They were exercising
power not out of love, not for the sake of the good,
not from the standpoint of wisdom. Remember the homily from last week. Rather they were exercising
power from the standpoint of ego and for the sake of the ego. Now you got figures from
Julius Caesar and Herod to Napoleon and Stalin and Pol Pot. The havoc these figures
wreaked around themselves from the abuse of power,
seeking it in the wrong way and for the wrong purposes. Think of characters in literature;
Macbeth is an example of someone. I think even more than
power Macbeth wanted honor. To be a king. “These witches have predicted I'll
become king and it's coming true, and if I were
king . . .” The havoc he wreaks
in that play, the destruction to his
own soul and then to the lives of people around him, because once you've got
that bug in you, you got that gnawing hunger
in you to be honored,
you'll stop at nothing. Now, fellow sinners,
you know what I'm talking about. Macbeth and people
at the high level, but all of us fall
in this temptation. Oh, to get that position,
to get that title, I'll gossip,
I'll destroy reputations, I'll use and manipulate people. I'll do damage
all around myself out of this hunger
and thirst for honor. Honor for the sake of God, terrific. Ignatius of Loyola's famous
adage “ad maiorem Dei gloriam” —to the greater glory of God.
Terrific. “Hey Lord,
give me what I want. I want your honor.”
Terrific. Off you go.
Be as bold as you want. “Lord, give me power that I might
effect your will in the world.” Terrific.
Wonderful. Off you go.
Ask for it all you want. But don't come to Jesus saying, “Lord, we want you to give us
whatever we are asking for.” Ipso facto, you're in a bad
and dangerous spiritual space. You know,
in other tellings of this story in the Gospels,
this is where Jesus introduces the young child. “Unless you change and
become like one of these, you cannot enter the
kingdom of heaven.” Power, honor,
eschew those. If you're addicted to them —and that's what can
happen to us sinners— if you're addicted to them, it's like someone
addicted to alcohol. You can't fool around with that.
You need to stop like now. That's what he's saying with
the introduction of a child. If you're preoccupied with
your power and your honor, no, no, no.
You need cold turkey. You need to break
from those addictions. The saints,
sure, they know what to do with power and honor.
That's okay. They know what to do,
but look, most of us aren't saints. And so as an opening move,
Jesus says you need to break your preoccupation
with these two things. Become like a child
willing to be commanded. Can I point to a supreme irony? Oh and the Gospel writer
wanted us to see this. What do they ask for? “We want to be at your
right and your left when you come
into your glory.” As I said, that was in line with
Jewish expectations, that he'd be the king of Israel
and they'd be his prime ministers. Ah, but in the delicious
irony of the Gospel. When does Jesus
come into his glory? On the cross, where he
wears a crown of thorns and over his
head is placed a sign: Jesus of Nazareth,
the King of the Jews. Ah, that's what they
were anticipating. And it came true. He was indeed the
King of the Jews, but he was reigning from
an instrument of torture. And the crown he was wearing
was a crown of thorns. And everybody who at that moment,
when he came into his glory, was at his right and his left, the two criminals
crucified with him. See, now that's the solution
to this whole problem. Do you want power and honor? Good, great,
ask for them. As long as you want
them on Jesus’ terms, not yours. Because the kind of power
and the kind of honor he's going to give you,
don't look to worldly examples. Look rather to those two
figures who were indeed on his right and his left
when he came into his glory. And God bless you. Thanks so much
for watching. If you enjoyed this video,
I invite you to share it and to subscribe
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