(Twenty-ninth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on October 19, 2024
at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20,
22; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-ninth Sunday 2024]
There’s an old saying: Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it!
As it’s written, there’s a great deal of truth in that
expression.
But, based on today’s gospel story—and on my own observation
and personal experience—I would maintain that a qualifying phrase should be
added to that saying in order to make it completely accurate:
Be careful what you
pray for, because you just might get it—although you might not get it in the
way you expect to!
There are, as most of us know, three possible answers to the
prayers of petition that we lift up to God: the Lord can say Yes; he can say No; or he can say Wait.
But that’s only half the story. I say this because most of the time when we
ask God for something, we have our own ideas about how God should give it to us!
The problem is, our ideas about how God should supply our
needs don’t always match up with his ideas on the same subject.
And this causes some people to think that God doesn’t hear
their prayers, when, in fact, he does.
For example, we say to God, “Please give me patience”—and we want God to
magically and instantaneously infuse that gift into our soul such that nothing
bothers us anymore.
Of course, that’s not the way it usually happens. Normally when God gives us this particular
gift, he also allows it to be tested—and I mean REALLY TESTED!
We say to God, “Please heal me of this illness”—and we want
God to make us well immediately and directly by a special miracle.
And at times he does heal people that way.
But he also might heal us through the instrumentality of
modern medicine, and only after some long and very painful therapy.
We say to God, “Please restore my relationship with my
ex-friend, John; we haven’t spoken to one another in years”—and we want God to
pour his grace into John’s heart, such that John immediately picks up the phone
and calls us and apologizes for what he did and said to us all those years ago.
Well, maybe it will happen that way, but maybe it
won’t. Maybe God will only answer that
prayer after we have made the first move toward reconciliation with a letter or
a phone call or a personal visit.
Sometimes God gives us what we want, but not exactly in the
way we want it.
And so it was for James and John. They asked Jesus for special places in his
kingdom, and, happily, they did get what they asked for! Here in this scene, of course, Jesus doesn’t
commit himself on the matter, but we know for a fact that he did honor their
request—their ‘prayer of petition’—because of what he said in Matthew 19. There Peter says to Jesus, “We have put
everything aside to follow you. What can
we expect from it?” And Jesus responds
by saying, “I give you my solemn word, in the new age when the Son of Man takes
his seat upon a throne befitting his glory, you who have followed me shall
likewise take your places on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of
Israel.”
The Heavenly Father made it clear to Jesus that Peter,
James, John and the other apostles would have special places in his eternal
kingdom. So this request—in effect, this
prayer of petition—that James and John made in today’s gospel was ultimately
answered by Jesus with a resounding Yes; however their path to those special
heavenly places was probably not what these two apostles expected.
When they made their request, they probably did not think they would have to endure
great suffering beforehand, but that’s exactly the way it happened. James was the first apostle to be martyred
(Herod Agrippa had him beheaded only a decade or so after the Resurrection of
Jesus), and John endured a martyrdom of intense persecution throughout his life
for his faithfulness in proclaiming the gospel.
Both drank from the cup—the cup of suffering—from which Jesus drank.
They probably expected a much easier path to glory, a much
easier ‘road to the throne’ so to speak!
They accepted “the cup” willingly and eagerly in this gospel scene, but
I doubt they really understood what that cup contained!
So let’s not be discouraged when we pray for good things for
others, and suffering comes to them instead.
In reality God might be saying Yes to our prayer, but by a different
path than the one we think he should follow.
God does not cause evil, but he will sometimes allow us to experience
evil for the sake of a greater good.
That’s the way it was for James and John: he allowed them to
experience the ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’ of intense suffering, for the sake of an
eternal crown of glory.
I have known, for example, many people who have prayed for
the conversions of their children who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or who
are living an immoral, hedonistic, materialistic lifestyle. They pray and they pray and they pray—and
nothing seems to be getting better. In
fact, their children sink deeper and deeper into sin. They sincerely wonder if their prayers are
falling on deaf ears. Finally their
children hit rock bottom, and are on the verge of despair—but then, they turn
their lives around. They open up to God;
they make a humble and thorough confession; they get reconnected to the Church;
they start coming to Mass again; they find a community of believers that
supports them; they make ‘a complete 180’ in their lives.
Afterward, so very often, these converted men and women will
say, “I’m not happy I brought all that suffering on myself and nearly destroyed
my life, but I know that if I hadn’t suffered in that way—if I hadn’t hit rock
bottom—I never would have changed my ways.
I would have continued down the wrong path—and I probably would have
ended up in hell.”
Be careful what you
pray for, because you just might get it—although you might not get it in the
way you expect to!
But that’s ok. At
least, that’s what these converted men and women would say. And I’m sure James and John would agree with
them, sitting, as they now are, on their glorious thrones in heaven.
