Retreat Homily for the Feast of St. James

Often in Scripture, we encounter someone who asks Jesus for what he or she wants. In this case, it is the wife of Zebedee, mother of James and John, a good Jewish mother, who goes to Jesus to ask for a wish. I am delighted because I am always saying to my retreatants, "Ask Jesus for what you want. He wants to give it to you. Just plainly ask!" Ignatius says that God is always acting through our desires so it is best to speak them to Jesus. I enjoy knowing that the men who are the pillars of our faith (our stalwart Apostles) sent their mother to do their work for them. Somehow this seems very real. Mothers have a way of getting the very best for their children.

          For any number of reasons, we don't ask for what we want and desire. We think of desire as a bad thing, partially because it represents sensuality or sexuality. We are taught that our desires are bad or selfish, like the old Jesuit maxim, "Go get what you want before all the selfish people take it." We ought not to want something for ourselves. We are told to ask for some good for another person instead. And. And. And. We dare not ask God something for ourselves even though God commands us many times in scripture to do so. We are taught early on not to give voice to our desires.

          In today's Gospel, James and John want the privileged honor of sitting next to Jesus when he comes into the fullness of his kingdom. Their mother asks for it, and Jesus is astonished at the lack of thought given to their request. He asks, "Can you drink from the cup - of suffering?" They answer eagerly, maybe impetuously, "We can." Who in their right mind would make such a request? The cross is not something to be taken lightly. We are to be free to say 'yes' to approach the cross. Some rightly say 'no' or 'not yet' because they know what they don't want; if we say 'yes,' we are to be aware of the pain and suffering we will face as we gaze upon the awful sorrow of the cross of Jesus.

          As we hear from Jesus, one thing is clear: the cross looms on the horizon - whether we desire it or not. It is not something we can escape or avoid. We will deal with it at some point in life. The question that arises is: What is our disposition and attitude by which we approach the cross? "How" is more important that "what."

          I have learned to be real in my prayer. I have learned that it is important for me to express my unfiltered desires and feelings to God in the rawest way I can do it. I have learned to see that my anger is good. It is very healthy to find ways to express it well so I know I am heard. I have shouted at God with tremendous anger. I have been so angry with God I would not even talk to him for stretches of time and I derided God for his lack of power and his lack of concern. I have poured out my heart far from the kindest of ways because I wanted to let God know of my supreme frustration and my utter doubt in God's care of me and my loved ones. How could God treat me this way if God is all loving and all powerful and all just. I let him have it good. I felt better.
 

         I watched my sister die an excruciating death. She was born with mental retardation and had a difficult life that fundamentally shaped the dynamics of our family. We cared for her as best we knew how. Early in my life I got so angry with God for allowing this dreadful condition to inhabit a sweet little girl. Poor girl. As a young boy, I recall screaming at God for making her a person with retardation. At age six, I recall steaming in frustration that God chose this and allowed this to happen. I pleaded with God to give me her condition so my innocent sister could be set free. I wanted her to live well. Her illness in life was undeserved.

          I was sympathetic and yet frustrated with my parents because they did not protest enough to the doctors as my sister was still in the womb. I wished they could have spoken for their own needs and desires more vehemently. My hemorrhaging mother during her last month of pregnancy was told to go home because she was in false labor. My parents obediently followed the doctor's professional advice though they knew better. All the while, the umbilical cord wrapped around my sister's neck depriving her of needed oxygen.  

          At the end of her 43 years of life she stayed at home amidst seven long years of pain and suffering - the worst I've ever seen. I came close to cursing Jesus for he had only been on the cross for three hours; my sister's suffering was much more awful. Wheelchair bound and constricted in a physical prison, a tube inserted to feed her and a tube to catch her waste, she was stung with pain. We would hold her in our arms each day and look into her catatonic eyes wondering if she knew we were there. How we wished she could speak and tell us how she felt. She cried cry herself to sleep and immediately awoke from her chronic, ceaseless pain. Sleep could not soften her fatigue. Hospitals sent her back to us because her pain was too unbearable for nurses and other patients to hear. It caused everyone discomfort. Even loving care-givers did not want to hear her moans of pain. We fear suffering.Our fear and psychic pain would arise and we tried to reach her to let her know we were there for her, and we knew we were unable to help her. We were inexhaustibly powerless. We could provide no relief. We too were stripped of any choice - utterly without any control or power.

          After further pouring out my groaning and moaning to God while caressing my sister's face, it was then that I could penetrate deeply into my sister's blank, catatonic eyes. She could not fully see me back but I had to continue to look. I wanted to find her, to have her recognize me, to stand by her, and I could not give up. I gazed into the dark infinity through her eyes. Exhausted, despairing, and hopeless, I was drawn in to see the sad, sorrowful eyes of Jesus looking back at me. He was there on the cross, weeping, weeping deeply for my sister, that I could finally come to a place of stillness and silence. I gazed upon him on the cross as he beheld my sister on hers. He was with her in her suffering and with me in mine. He writhed in pain because we were in pain as life slipped out of his body. He was so sad for us and he could not get off the cross because he needed to be there for us.

          My sister's pain continued a few more months before she died. I don't know how my mother made it through a single day, but she was lovingly faithful to her daughter. I solidly knew that Jesus was with my sister and she seemed consoled by that. It was only by looking deeply into that dark pit of suffering that Jesus was able to gently reach me and show me his heart. At this place, the desires of my heart met his - and he was gracious.

          I encountered a gentle God - a God who cannot act violently, especially with earthen vessels. Jesus gives us the greatest gift he can - by being in vulnerable solidarity with his people as he hangs on the cross, with those who hang on the cross. If we look deeply into our suffering, we will undoubtedly find the broken, disabled, disfigured Christ, imprisoned on his Cross, and he will gently be present to us. No greater gift exists.

                Because of this, says St. Paul, we are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in us. Death is at work in us; and life too. Therefore, we take up the cup of suffering; the same cup that is the cup of life. Because we believe, we can speak of the one who raised the Lord Jesus because it is the same one who will raise us also with Jesus and place us in his presence, like he did with my sister. It is a place where we most want to be.