Wednesday, March 2, 2011

No comfort blankets!

Faith is not meant to be a comfort blanket.… It is a strenuous call to engage all we are with the Father of Jesus. ~Sister Wendy on Prayer by Sister Wendy Beckett

Ave Maria! Sr. Wendy's astute observation on faith, which arrived in my email box this morning, ties in well with today's gospel (Mark 10:32-45) where James and John tell the Lord "we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” and then ask him, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” Jesus makes it clear that he's not handing out comfort blankets -- not now, at least, and as for later, that's not his to give. In his typically unequivocal fashion, the Master enlightens his followers with the truth: “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And when they blithely respond, "We can," Christ spells out the details so that they might understand and accept that faith is, as Sr. Wendy says, "a strenuous call to engage all we are with the Father of Jesus."

The disciples just don't get it. And neither do I most of the time. I very much want my comfort blanket and all the creature comforts that go with it. I'm afraid of drinking the chalice of suffering that my Lord drank, of being baptized unto death as He was. The idea of being servant and slave of all overwhelms me. I'm not that good, that generous, that loving. I am selfish, proud, ambitious. I have my needs and desires. And yet, more than anything else, I do ardently long to follow Jesus through death to life for the glory of the Father. With St. Paul, I want to be found in Christ, "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 4:9-11). I am weak, but He is strong. With Him, I shall do bravely. Deo gratias!
Dear Lord, strengthen my faith and enlarge my heart so that I may live and die for You alone. Amen.

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