Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
CAN YOU DRINK THE CHALICE?
[Continued from yesterday]
"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." "Master," they say, "we desire that whatsoever we ask, Thou wouldst do it for us."
Is not this just what He assures us He will do? Yet now He replies: "You know not what you ask."
Evidently they are asking for the wrong thing, seeking in the wrong direction, knocking at the wrong door. "Ask and you shall receive," He tells us, "that your joy may be full"; that is, in all your petitions keep your salvation and eternal happiness in view.
Yet how sweetly He invites them to share in His sufferings! His question is not "Can you face death?" but "Can you walk in My footsteps, drink after Me?" "They say to Him: We can. He saith to them: My chalice, indeed, you shall drink; but to sit on My right or left hand is not lVline to give you, but to them for whom it is prepared by My Father."
He knows that later on they will become men of another mold and gladly face torture and death for His sake; all these worldly ambitions will then be laid aside; so He is content to wait for that hour.
Shall I ever do anything heroic to make up for all my petty selfishness?
Their fellow-disciples "were moved to indignation against the two brethren," thinking no doubt that they had been trying to steal a march on them....[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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