Deciding What to Live For
Simone Riva - James and John's dialogue with Jesus is about the power we want. But the real power comes from sharing in His cross and resurrection.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached Jesus and said to him, "Master, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. He said to them, 'What do you want me to do for you? They answered him, 'Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory'" (Mark 10:35-37).
It sounds like a dialog from a telephone wiretap of our time, documenting yet another attempt to place oneself in a place of prominence, but it is the Gospel. It is impressive how Christ does not spare even his own the path necessary to discover that a decision must be made about what to live for. And he does this while they are following him, not taking their yes for granted, not being satisfied with any kind of following. They may have misunderstood, imagined future scenarios of glory, or simply given in to the temptation that undermines every human being: power. To settle down, to finally become part of the circle of those who decide, to influence reality with those ideas that have been nurtured for years and have never come to fruition, to put one's people in the right places, to see the places where meetings are held fill up ... and then what? When it's all done, to be disappointed and dissatisfied, worse than before, with the typical handful of our completed projects.
Jesus challenges James and John: "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized into the baptism with which I am baptized?" Here is the heart of the matter, which concerns everyone, even the other ten apostles, who "when they heard this, began to be indignant with James and John": to assert oneself or to give oneself. Christ, in order to remove from "self-giving" the last veil of moralism and spiritualism that could imprison it, took the historical initiative of showing the true face of self-giving. The fate of passion that awaits the Master will also await the disciples: this is the real guarantee, not that of success and power, as Jesus himself reveals: "The cup that I drink you will also drink, and the baptism that I receive you will also receive.
The gift of Christ's life for each person, however, is a gift that moves, that penetrates. Fr. Giussani writes: "God's love for man is an agitation, a gift of himself that vibrates, stirs, moves, is realized as an emotion, in the reality of an agitation: he is moved. God who is moved! What is man that you should remember him?" says the Psalm" (Si può vivere così?, Rizzoli, Milan 2007, p. 332). Self-giving thus reaches the summit of its nature and makes the life of those who allow themselves to be caught up in its impulse flourish. "'Can you drink the cup that I drink, or receive the baptism with which I am baptized? They answered him, 'We can'"; true power is precisely participation in the gift of the Son of God. Just as they were not fully aware of what they were saying when they asked to sit at His right hand and at His left hand in the Kingdom of Heaven, even when they answer, "We can," they probably do not grasp the full implications of what they are saying.
They will have time to verify this "second call" of the Lord to his own destiny, in the meantime they have learned - as John Lennon sang in the song "Beautiful Boy" - that "life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
The author has not revised the text and its translation.
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