But what, precisely, is the mark of having achieved success? Is it being admitted to the best graduate school; getting hired by the biggest law firm; being offered the six-figure salary; living in the nicest house and driving the fanciest car?
In today’s Gospel Jesus’ Apostles are having a bit of a problem defining what true success is. Jesus has just finished explaining that the Son of Man will be handed over and killed, and they are arguing about their status in the group – about who is the greatest among them; who’s closest to Jesus; who’s going to be His right-hand man when He reestablishes the kingdom to Israel.
And so Jesus has to clarify His point and turn their expectations upside down. The one who is first among them, He says, must be last, and must be the servant of all. And to drive His point home, He takes a child into His arms and says, “Whoever receives once child such as this in my name receives me, and the One who sent me.”
Now we have to think of children as something other than cute, cuddly, loveable and innocent. To understand the real power of what Jesus is saying we have to remember that in Jesus’ time children were essentially ‘non-persons.’ They were often unprotected and ignored – and as such they serve here as a symbol of all those who are powerless and vulnerable.
Jesus is insisting that while the disciples desire positions of power in God’s kingdom, they should really be more concerned with welcoming and serving the lowest and the least. Jesus is trying to teach them that true success, true wisdom, is found in receiving the most vulnerable of society – because it is in receiving them that we receive Jesus, and His heavenly Father who sent Him.
When I was an undergraduate here at Notre Dame, I lived in Siegfried Hall, and whenever I felt like the pressures of the semester were weighing me down, and I was finding it hard to remember what the point of all this hard work really was, I’d sit in the dark of Siegfried Hall Chapel, and pray before the statue of Mary.
Many of you know that Siegfried’s Chapel is dedicated to Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom – and the statue there is a beautiful piece from 13th century Spain: Mary, seated on a throne – the young Christ sitting in her lap, and Mary holding him out towards the world.
I always found that praying before that image of Our Lady helped put the search for Wisdom and my definitions of success back into perspective.
Mary never went to school – more than likely she never learned to read or write. And yet we honor her as Seat of Wisdom, because true Wisdom, true success is so much more than obtaining book knowledge or securing the trappings of worldly power.
In our second reading, the Letter of St. James says that true Wisdom, Wisdom from above is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits.” Sown like a seed, Wisdom is known by the fruit it bears, by the rich harvest of peace and righteousness it yields.
This is why Mary is the Seat of Wisdom. From the moment Gabriel’s message sounded in her ear, and she gave her “yes,” to God, Mary protected and nourished that seed in the pure and fertile soil of her very flesh, and that seed bore fruit, even before Christ is born.
It bore fruit when Mary sang her Magnificat – her prayer of praise for all the wonders that God has done, in which she says: “God has cast the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”
And it bore fruit when she went, in haste, toward the hill country, to be of service to her cousin Elizabeth who was also pregnant. As Mary journeyed, she bore Christ wherever she went, and to whomever she met.
Friends, this is the very height of Wisdom and the mark of true success for the Christian disciple: to praise all God’s wonders, and the inseparable instinct to bear Christ to others in humble service.
While Mary bears this Wisdom by virtue of the Incarnation – the Christ-seed literally growing in the flesh within her, we too bear the Christ-seed – spiritually speaking, by virtue of the grace planted within us at Baptism.
Our mission, like Mary’s, is to bear Christ to the world. And we do so in words and deeds that convince others of the Christ-seed that is within them – and we help each other nourish that seed of Wisdom for an even more abundant harvest.
This is the true Wisdom that we are supposed to gain here at Our Lady’s University – and all the other education and training we receive are meant to give us the varied tools we need to bear Christ to the world, and to receive Him into our lives by serving the most vulnerable and powerless: the defenseless child, the despairing poor, the forgotten elderly, the refugees of war.
The world around us often seems to say that it’s smarter to take care of yourself. Success, we are told, is to make sure that you’re taken care of, and let everyone else fend for themselves.
It’s not easy for us to avoid this worldly way of thinking, just as it was not easy for the Apostles, just as it was not easy for Mary to endure the hardships and suffering she faced in her faithfulness.
That’s why we gather so often around the Eucharistic table, to feast on Wisdom for nourishment and strength.
May all of our efforts here at Notre Dame, all of our labors in the classroom, in the library, in the laboratories, and in the dorms – all of our efforts be aimed at one true purpose: the pursuit and proclamation of the true Wisdom that is Christ Himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment