The Lenten Conversion of Our Earthly Ambitions, Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent, February 28, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent
February 28, 2024
Jer 18:18-20, Ps 31, Mt 20:17-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

• The entire season of Lent is a commentary on what Jesus announced to us on Ash Wednesday. It’s an occasion to turn away from sin and turn to Him who is the Gospel in such a way that we seek and begin to turn with him constantly, which is what it means to “con-vert.” That conversion to which we’re summoned does not stop at external behaviors, rending our garments, but at our desires, what the Prophet Joel calls rending our hearts. In today’s readings we see how our deepest desires, our most profound ambitions, are meant to be transformed. In the Gospel yesterday, Jesus told us, “The greatest among you must be your servant,” and Jesus today reiterates that point saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave,” and says that this is at its deepest level a reiteration of his common command, “Follow me,” because “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
• Lent is the period for the transformation of our ambitions, so that we will turn more and more with Jesus’ ambition. The three Lenten practices are all meant to help us: prayer helps us to look at things from God’s perspective, fasting to help us hunger for God and for what he hungers, almsgiving to help us to put others’ needs ahead of our own personal desires. Jesus wants to help us transform our ambitions by uniting us to his own prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It’s important for us to note that he doesn’t seek to eliminate all ambition. For him, ambition, desire, hunger themselves are not sins. But he wants us to be desirous of the right things, to revolutionize what great things we seek. There’s a pacific ocean between ambition for self-aggrandizement, which is the typical ambition in the world, and ambition for souls; between seeking to glorify one’s name and establish one’s kingdom versus trying to hallow God’s Name and enter and establish his Kingdom. Today in the Gospel Jesus seeks to make holy the ambition not just of James and John and their mother, not just of the apostles, but all of us. And in the process, he teaches us an important lesson about the way he purifies us of false ambition so that we may be more like him.
• We see just how much the apostles’ and their family members’ ambitions need to be transformed in St. Matthew’s account. As soon as Jesus gives the third prediction of his upcoming betrayal, condemnation, mockery, scourging and crucifixion, rather than consoling him, the apostles and John’s and James’ mom show their spiritually worldly ambitions. In fact, every time Jesus predicted his passion it seemed to bring out the worst, rather than the best, in his followers. We remember the first time he announced it, Peter, thinking not as God does but as human beings do and playing the part of Satan, “rebuked” him, saying “no such thing should ever happen to you.” The second time Jesus gave announced what would happen everyone just remained silent, thinking about their own situation, and then speaking along the way about the one who would be the greatest. But it gets worse today. As soon as he says the words about his crucifixion, the mother of James and John approached Jesus with her sons — because they were too afraid to ask on their own, it seems — and petitioned that they sit on his right and his left as his two chief advisors when he entered into what they believed would be his earthly kingdom. Little did she know that those thrones would be occupied by two thieves on Calvary! When the other ten apostles heard about this, St. Matthew, one of them, recalls, “they became indignant at the two brothers,” not of course because they found such behavior contrary to genuine love of Jesus but because they likewise coveted those two spots.
• Jesus took advantage of the ugliness of the raw earthly ambition to instruct them about the holy ambition he wants them and us to have. He asked, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” That chalice was the cup Jesus would pray that the Father take away from him in the Garden, the cup of suffering announced by the psalms and the Prophet Isaiah. He was asking whether they could share in his suffering and the zeal that led him to suffer for others’ salvation. He was inviting them to share his own desires and enter truly into his kingdom. To illustrate how Jesus wants us to share in his ambition, he asks James and John whether they can drink the chalice he was about to drink. This is a question as to whether they could share his suffering for others’ redemption and the love that inspired it, as to whether they were willing to serve others according to the standards of the kingdom rather than of the world. John and James willingly replied, “We can!,” a sign of the promptness of their conversion, and Jesus confirmed that they would. But then Jesus made a larger point about the ambition he wanted them and us to have, contrasting his ambition with those of worldly kings and sycophantic courtiers: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Ambition for greatness in Jesus’ kingdom will be shown not by positions of authority but by practices of service and ultimately by giving our whole life to rescue others from slavery to sin and death. Today, Jesus asks all of us whether we’re willing to drink that chalice. In an age in which many in the Church and society speak of empowerment as if all of life depended on taking and exercising power and in which the sin of clericalism has been exposed in all its destructive ugliness, Jesus’ words about transformed ambition are ever relevant… and challenging.
• Drinking Jesus’ chalice of holy ambition, we have to admit, goes against any hopes and plans we might have had for a comfy life. God, after all, didn’t create us with a desire to suffer. After the Fall, however, our love for others would be shown by our capacity to suffer and die for them, since, as Jesus would say during the Last Supper, no one has greater love than to die for others. This transformation was a struggle for the Prophet Jeremiah. After recounting to the Lord how others were contriving plots against him to destroy him, he turned to God and complained, “Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life? Remember that I stood before you to speak in their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them.” He had done good and was suffering as a result — and that fundamental unfairness scandalized him. He did not realize at that point because of his youth that the suffering he would eventually willingly endure, his loving service toward those who were plotting to kill him, his humility and identification with God’s saving will under duress, would lead to his eternal exaltation. He was able to drink the chalice of suffering in anticipation of Jesus’ drinking it to the dregs, but at first he shied away. The Lord allowed him that suffering for his own purification. The Lord often treats us in a similar way. When we serve others, we may not be thanked or appreciated. Others may in fact pay attention to our words not because they’re God’s words but to catch us in our speech. They may allow us to serve them just to catch us in a mistake. Regardless, God permits this because out of it he wants to help us transform our life into a ransom for others, in imitation of, and together with, Jesus’ self-giving. This is a hard teaching, but it is part of the good news: When we unite our occasionally unrequited love, our unappreciated service, to Jesus and his, he is in fact able to make it a ransom to save many.
• Jesus wants us all to be great in his kingdom and today he teaches us how. As we prepare to become one with him in Holy Communion, as we prepare to drink from the chalice of his Precious Blood, let us remember that at the Last Supper, right after Jesus had consecrated the Precious Blood and mentioned that one of the Twelve would betray him, they all began to argue once again who among them was the greatest (Lk 22:19-23). Today let’s convert that same egocentric impulse by striving to be the greatest, not according to earthly categories, but divine. Let us ask Jesus for the grace to conform ourselves to his merciful ambitions for us so that we may imitate him in becoming the servant of the rest and in giving our lives, with His, as a ransom for as many as we can. He asks us today, “Can you drink this chalice?” And through the intercession of SS. James and John as well as of John of God, may we reply, and mean, “Yes we can!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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