CAN YOU DRINK THE CUP I WILL DRINK?

FEAST OF SAINT JAMES, APOSTLE

2 Cor 4:7-15; Ps 126:1-6; Mt 20:20-28

Drinking the Cup of the Lord

We explained yesterday that God used terrifying sounds, sights, and words to instil fear in the minds and hearts of children of Israel because such was their treatment in their slavery in Egypt. God employed fear and terror to effectively communicate to those who were treated as slaves and understand well through such treatment. Though the Law he transmitted to them is spiritual and life-giving, he gave it in a way to instil fear in the slaves he was guiding to inherit life through loving obedience to his word. The Law, as spiritual, excludes the slave from possessing what God has promised his sons. Hence, every part of our members enslaved to physical or sensible realities is terrified to death by the manifestation of God and his divine will, and prevented from entering and possessing the spiritual gifts. The Law itself, being spiritual, cannot be kept by our physical or sensible members. The Law attains its first purpose in making us realise how weak we are in our bodies; that is, in our natural life, we are slaves to the senses due to the original sin of our first parents. The children of Israel attained their purpose as the type of the Church in their entrance into the promised land of Canaan. Only those who believed in the word of God proclaimed to them by Moses and Joshua, their leaders, were able to enter the land. The disobedient and unfaithful could not. These are also a type of those who fail to believe in the Gospel now.

The inability of our old nature to keep the Law of God reveals our spiritual death due to sin or disobedience to the will of God. The revelation of man’s weakness to man by the divine Law opens us to receive help from God. To the receptive human nature that evolved from the struggle to keep the Law of Moses, God sent His Word that gives life. The grace of the Gospel is what we have received at our profession of faith in the incarnation of the Son of God. About this immeasurable grace, Saint Paul writes: “We are only the earthenware jars that hold this treasure, to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God and not from us.” The treasure here is the same as the heavenly rest God gave to Abraham and all who are his children through faith. We gain the heavenly inheritance by faith in the word of God and never by obedience to the Law. What the Law contained but was inaccessible to human nature, is now given to us by the grace made abundant to those who believe in the Son of Man. While our human nature suffers and dies, faith accesses the grace and spiritual life of Jesus Christ. “We are in difficulties on all sides, but never cornered; we see no answer to our problems, but never despair; we have been persecuted, but never deserted; knocked down, but never killed; always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may always be seen in our body.”

So, the fact is that in our bodies that are subject or enslaved to sin and sinful habits, we obey the law of sin, and serve the death sentence pronounced on us by the word of God when our first parents sinned. In our life in the spirit generated by our profession of faith in Jesus Christ, we enjoy the life of grace, which is the life of God. The Law of God bars us from a life of grace when we take our orientation from our sinful flesh or the senses, for sinful orientation leads only to death. Hence, the Lord speaks of his cup of suffering to James and his brother, John, who desired external glory. “‘You do not know what you are asking,’ Jesus answered. ‘Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’” When we set our minds and hearts on external riches and glories, we encounter pain, suffering, and death by necessity of our fallen nature. But when we set our minds and hearts on the spiritual life and glories, we willingly accept the loss of our physical members and life for the love of God, who gives us eternal life gratuitously. Thus, Jesus explains that only the Father gives the life of the Son to whomever he wants. “Very well, you shall drink my cup, but as for seats at my right hand and my left, these are not mine to grant; they belong to those to whom they have been allotted by my Father.” In spiritual life, we do only the Father’s will. We must train ourselves to be slaves of God’s will, that we may enjoy the freedom of God’s sons. “Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.” May the prayers of Saint James help us to learn the lesson that he learned very quickly from the Master.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who consecrated the first fruits of your Apostles by the blood of Saint James, grant, we pray, that your Church may be strengthened by his confession of faith and constantly sustained by his protection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.