+ Our readings today give us a lesson in “perspective.” How we
look at something matters a great deal. One of the great lessons that we can
learn is to not be so “near-sighted” and “me-oriented,” but rather to get an
accurate picture of anything actually, we need to be able to step back and see
a broader and bigger picture, then it will be easier to see how everything we
are trying to understand fits into the master-plan.
And there most definitely is a
master plan: and the bigger, wider picture is salvation history. If people on
the planet do not understand that things do not begin and end with them, then
they are on the right track. The total story is thousands of years old, and the
conclusion of it could be at any moment – for we are living in the end of the
end times! We just seem to know that – and have that sense – and it is a valid
sense, a real sense, and one that ought to help us reprioritize everything.
The first reading perspective
lesson was seen with St. Peter trying to convince the Jewish people that the
“ransom” that needed to be accomplished – in mending the fences between God and
mankind – but that it could never be an earthbound ransom such as paying large
sums of silver and gold, No! God had been offended, and so the ransom had to be
literally ‘out of this world’ while at the same time ‘very much in this world,
the world that did the offending’!
And so – the blood of one who
was both God and Man at the same time would have to be offered, by the one
Perfect Priest and Victim – and that would be Jesus, the Messiah – whom they
killed, because they did not get the message about who he really was. Obedience
then, the obedience of our faith in this person, and these things, can buy us
into participation in their merits: life after our own death, victory after our
own passions, joy after the vale of tears!
The perceptive lesson in the
gospel passage is about James and John wanting special seating in the Kingdom
to come, right next to Jesus. Jesus informs them that their perspective is a
bit cloudy and they don’t know what they are asking: to sit near him would take
an extra measure of sacrifice and “chalice-drinking” on their part – but even
then, only the Father has direct say over the seating chart in heaven. Then,
Jesus instructs all the disciples that if you want a seat close to me, then you
will be the servants of everyone. And those who do that best – even to the
point of death – will get closer – but again – immediate seating will probably
be of Jesus Mother, Mary, and maybe even his foster-Father Joseph! We will see
and know for sure when we get their. But we will only get their if we consider
ourselves right sized – and then love every aspect of it!
The Alleluia Verse summarizes
things nicely for us: The Son of Man came
to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Alleluia!
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