Scene from the Gospels

May 30

“If you’re gonna be a Christian, you better look good on wood.”
--Daniel Berrigan


They are walking toward Jerusalem, a dusty road through open country. The twelve seem dazed; they’re tired and overloaded. The people behind are apprehensive. Where are we going?, they are wondering They keep a safe distance.

Jesus looks from his left to his right, at Peter, at Andrew. He shakes his head, a rueful smile breaking across his lips. Again he stops, pulls them aside.

“Do you understand what we’re doing?” he asks them patiently. They stare at him blankly. “We are going to Jerusalem,” he says again. “There, the Son of Man will be arrested. He will be accused. He will be beaten and spit on and scorned. He will be hung on a tree and left to die.” He pauses. “And he will rise again in glory.”

The Sons of Thunder perk up at that last part. Glory? “When you get to heaven, can we sit next to you?” one of them blurts.

He sighs. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Like children, they persist. “C’mon. We asked you first. Why not?”

He turns to look at them, eyes piercing, face now grave. “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”

They glance at each other before answering. “Y-yes. We can drink it.”

His eyes and voice grow tender. “Indeed you will drink it, brothers,” he says quietly. “Indeed you will. But a place in the kingdom is not mine to give.”

The others approach. “A place in the kingdom? What’s all this?” Peter’s voice is indignant. There’s jostling.

He grabs Peter by the shoulders, firmly, but not roughly. The jostling stops. “Know this, brothers,” he says, back to smiling. “When men gain power, they seek out the high place for themselves, the seat of authority. It cannot be so with you.” Again, his voice grows tender, and he looks from one to the next. “With you, it must be like this: The one who is first is the one who serves all the rest.”

“If you would be first,” he repeats, “you must be servant to all the rest.”

They look at him. Some of their faces remain hopelessly blank. In others, though, in Peter’s and Andrew’s, a dim light of recognition finally dawns.

You said it, brother.

In one of his Lenten retreat talks, Creighton’s Larry Gillick, SJ, quotes Orwell:
“ ‘It’s a tremendous human struggle just to see the things that are right under your nose —’ to become alert and attentive and stay that way.”

In memoriam

There’s a moving tribute in this week’s America to Robert Drinan, the Jesuit priest who served in Congress back in the ‘70s, then returned to legal scholarship at Georgetown when ordered to do so by the pope. The author, Ladislas Orsy, another Jesuit legal scholar (and one I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, a learned, gentle man), does not dwell on Drinan’s accomplishments, but on his love and generosity, his constant reaching out to people in need. Orsy paraphrases Aristotle and Aquinas in explaining Drinan’s drive and his vast impact, that “goodness cannot contain itself: it is expansive by nature like a wellspring with unlimited supply.” He imagines Drinan 60 years ago as a young Jesuit in Florence, reading Dante on divine love. From there, “he set out on an adventure to mend this broken world.” Requiescat in pace.