It’s a bit like having your friends recall every year the time you backed into and destroyed that parking meter! The gospel reading chosen for this Feast of St. James does not celebrate his most flattering moment: it tells of the time his mother, with the connivance of her sons, approached Jesus to ask preferential treatment for James and his brother John in the coming kingdom. If, on the other hand, Mark 1: 19-20 had been chosen for today’s gospel reading, we would have seen James and John leaving their nets immediately to follow Jesus at his call. A bit more flattering!
But, once again, a less favorable incident from the life of a person we call a saint seems to be more useful to us mere mortals than recounting how he or she rose off the ground while praying or halted a careening car by holding up his or her hand. All of us have embarrassing moments in our lives, whether it’s backing into that parking meter or something more devastating or downright shameful or flagrantly dishonest.
Our healing and moving on to better things, it is to be hoped, have followed from listening to our consciences and asking forgiveness, much as the brothers were brought down to reality by Jesus’ question to them, “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” The gospel reading for this feast is full of fruitful things to ponder. One of them for us to pray about and apply to our daily circumstances of life if the often repeated lesson of Jesus’ words and life: “whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). Exaltation and position, poor human words for what God intends for us, are in God’s gracious gift to us in Jesus. Our part and our joy too will be found in loving service and compassion for our neighbors and all those we meet. We heard it in the reading from Second Corinthians: “we too believe……, knowing that the One who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in God’s Presence” (2 Cor 4: 13-14). My brothers and sisters, there is no other way to a place in the kingdom!