The 29th Sunday of the Year Is 53:10-11; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45 (Year B)
Throughout the world this Sunday is kept as World Mission Day. We are reminded that, by virtue of our shared baptism, all are called and enabled to become witnesses to the Gospel. It is not enough simply to support the Church’s mission from afar. Each, by the way they live their lives, must become a part of that mission.
The prophet Isaiah, describing a suffering servant, outlined the mission that would find its fulfilment in Jesus: “The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering. His soul’s anguish over, he shall see the light and be content. By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus would describe his mission as the outpouring of the Father’s love. God so loved our sinful world that he sent his only Son, not to judge the world, but so that we might have life in him.
At the heart of this salvation was a humility that chose to accompany a broken world in its suffering, enabling that suffering to become the way to life. This is the high priest described in the Letter to the Hebrews: “For it is not as if we had a high priest incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin.”
This surely points to the “accompaniment” so often described by Pope Francis as an essential quality in those who wish to become missionary disciples. We, like the Lord himself, must be prepared to walk with the sinner, the poor and the forgotten.
The disciples struggled to grasp what lay at the heart of Christ’s mission. The rich disciple melted away at the thought of abandoning his wealth. In this Sunday’s Gospel we see two keen disciples quite unaware of the self-interest that stood in the way of the mission entrusted to them. “Master, we want you to do us a favour. Allow us to sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” Rather than dismiss their failure to understand, Jesus questioned them further: “Can you drink the cup that I must drink, or be baptised with the baptism with which I must be baptised?”
On this World Mission Day, Jesus asks the same question of every would-be disciple. Beyond the ritual of our baptism is an invitation rooted in Christ himself. Are we willing to die to sin so as to live in him? Are we willing to accompany a suffering world into his presence? He alone makes up for all that is lacking in ourselves.
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