Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
CAN YOU DRINK THE CHALICE?
Then came to Him the Mother of the sons of Zebedee with her sons, adoring and asking something of Him. Who said to her: What wilt thou? She saith to Him: Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy Kingdom. And Jesus, answering, said: You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? They said to Him: We can.
-Matt. xx. 20-22.
It was a fixed idea in the Jewish mind that the Messias was to be a mighty monarch like Solomon, and as the apostles were His chosen followers, they looked to share in His glory and were always disputing who should be the greater among them.
This, then, is the request of the two brothers, that they may sit on either side of Christ in His kingdom. They know that they have been preferred before all the others, Peter alone excepted; what they now want is to get precedence of him.
It all seems very trivial and unworthy; but it is human nature. I find the same petty ambitions in myself. How wonderful is Our Saviour's patience with them and with me!
"And Jesus, answering, said: You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?" A striking commentary, this, on those wonderful promises to prayer: "Ask, and you shall receive, etc."....[Continued tomorrow]
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See
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