The Chalice Before the Throne
MASS Mihi autem
LESSON I Corinthians 4: 9-15
GOSPEL St Matthew 20: 20-23
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
A mother approaches Our Lord, kneels before Him, and asks something for her sons: “Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.” She believes that Christ is a King. She believes that His kingdom is real. Yet she still imagines that His kingdom is entered according to the laws of earthly advancement. She asks for two thrones. Our Lord answers by placing before her sons a chalice.
“Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?”
In that question lies the whole mystery of Saint James the Greater. He desired the throne before he understood the chalice. He sought the honour before he knew the cost. Yet Our Lord did not cast him aside for the imperfection of his desire. He accepted the generosity hidden within it, purified the ambition that disfigured it, and made the Apostle worthy of the very throne for which he had asked. James would indeed reign with Christ; but first he must learn that in the Kingdom of God the road to exaltation passes through abasement, the road to fruitfulness through sacrifice, and the road to the throne through the chalice.
James was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother, probably the elder brother, of Saint John. He was a fisherman of Galilee, accustomed to labour, rough weather, uncertain waters and the physical demands of his trade. Our Lord called James and John Boanerges, “the sons of thunder.” They were not timid men. Their defect was not tepidity, but vehemence. When a Samaritan village refused to receive Christ, they wished to command fire to descend from heaven and consume it.
Grace did not extinguish that fire. Grace purified it.
The disciple who once wanted fire to fall upon Christ’s enemies would one day shed his own blood for those same enemies. The man who wanted to stand nearest the throne would learn to take the lowest place among “men appointed to death.” The son of thunder would become a father in the Gospel. Christ did not destroy the strong character of James; He crucified what was disordered in it and consecrated what was noble.
There is great consolation here for us. Our Lord does not call only those who are already perfect, tranquil and detached. He calls men as they are: Peter with his impetuosity, Thomas with his hesitation, Matthew from his publican’s table, James and John with their fiery tempers and mingled motives. But He does not leave them as He finds them. Grace is not a religious varnish laid over the old man. Grace is a death and a resurrection. It takes our natural energies, our temperaments, even those qualities that have often led us into sin, and makes them instruments of supernatural virtue.
The stubborn man may become steadfast in the Faith. The naturally forceful man may become courageous in defence of truth. The sensitive soul may become compassionate. The ambitious man may learn to spend himself for the glory of God rather than his own advancement. Holiness does not mean that personality is erased. It means that personality is purified, ordered and offered.
Saint James was among the three Apostles admitted by Our Lord into the most intimate mysteries of His earthly life. With Peter and John, he entered the house where the daughter of Jairus lay dead and saw Christ restore her to life. He ascended Mount Tabor and beheld the face of Our Lord shining like the sun. He entered the garden of Gethsemane and saw that same sacred countenance bowed beneath sorrow, covered with the sweat of blood.
Tabor showed James the glory of the Kingdom. Gethsemane showed him the price by which that glory would be won.
On the mountain, James saw the throne. In the garden, he saw the chalice.
He could not yet understand that the splendour and the agony belonged to one mystery. He wanted the glory revealed upon Tabor, but Christ had first to teach him the obedience manifested in Gethsemane. The divine King reigns from the Cross. His crown is woven of thorns. His royal purple is His own Precious Blood. His throne upon earth is the wood upon which He is crucified. No Apostle can share the authority of Christ without first sharing something of His immolation.
This is why the question of the Gospel is not merely: “Are you prepared to suffer?” Many suffer without becoming holy. The question is: “Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?” Can you receive suffering as something united to Christ’s sacrifice? Can you submit your will to the Father when obedience is bitter? Can you continue to love when love is repaid by ingratitude? Can you remain faithful when fidelity brings no earthly reward? Can you accept not merely pain, but the precise form of self-renunciation permitted by Divine Providence?
James answers: “We can.”
At that moment he scarcely knows what he is saying. His answer contains presumption, but it also contains a genuine readiness to give himself. Our Lord receives the imperfect offering and foretells what grace will accomplish: “My chalice indeed you shall drink.”
Christ does not say that James already possesses the strength. He promises that the strength will be given. The grace required for martyrdom is not usually bestowed years before the sword appears. It is bestowed when the sword is at hand. We often torment ourselves by imagining future crosses and measuring them against our present weakness. But the God Who appoints the chalice also gives the strength to drink it. He does not ask us today to bear tomorrow’s burden. He asks us to remain faithful to today’s grace.
Some fourteen years after the Passion, in the year 44, the promise was fulfilled. Herod Agrippa I, seeking popularity among those hostile to the infant Church, stretched forth his hand against its leaders. The Acts of the Apostles records the martyrdom with stark brevity: “He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.”
There is no miraculous deliverance. No angel opens the prison. No earthquake breaks the chains. Peter would shortly be imprisoned by the same ruler and wonderfully released, but James was led to execution. Divine Providence appointed one Apostle to remain and another to die.
The faith of James did not fail because heaven appeared silent. God delivered Peter from the sword; He delivered James through the sword. Peter was restored to the earthly apostolate. James was admitted to the heavenly court. The throne once sought with imperfect ambition was now given to him because he had drunk the chalice unto its final drop.
The Epistle describes what James had become: “God hath set forth us apostles the last, as it were men appointed to death.” The world imagines authority as ascent: greater influence, greater security, greater honour. Saint Paul describes apostolic authority as abasement: hunger, thirst, nakedness, buffeting, homelessness, labour, persecution and contempt. “We are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now.”
Yet Saint Paul immediately reveals the fruit of this abasement: “I admonish you as my dearest children.” The Apostle suffers because he is a father. He does not seek followers to magnify himself. Through the Gospel, he begets souls for Christ. This is the purification of ambition into apostolic fatherhood: no longer to ask, “Where shall I sit?” but, “For whom must I spend myself?”
That question concerns not only bishops and priests, but every Christian entrusted with another soul. Parents possess authority so that they may sacrifice themselves for their children. Teachers possess knowledge so that they may form those placed under them. Those with wealth, influence or ability possess them as stewards. Christian authority is never a throne from which the self may be displayed. It is an altar upon which the self must be offered.
The Introit therefore declares: “To me Thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable: their principality is exceedingly strengthened.” Herod regarded James as disposable. God made him a prince. The world silenced him with the sword; the Offertory answers: “Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”
The persecutor could kill the preacher, but he could not arrest the Gospel. The sword that appeared to end the mission of James opened it to a fruitfulness beyond anything earthly success could have achieved. His apostolic voice travelled far beyond Jerusalem, and the venerable tradition of Christendom associates his relics with Compostela in Galicia, one of the great places of pilgrimage in the Catholic world.
For centuries, men and women left their homes and walked towards the Apostle’s shrine. They crossed mountains and rivers, endured hunger, exhaustion, rain and danger. They did not travel merely to see another place, but to become different people. A tourist asks what may be observed. A pilgrim asks what must be surrendered. The tourist seeks an experience. The pilgrim seeks conversion.
We are all pilgrims, whether or not we ever walk the road to Compostela. Time carries us forward, day by day, towards judgement and eternity. But it is possible to travel a great distance without drawing nearer to God. A life may be filled with movement, activity and experience, yet remain spiritually motionless. The question is not whether we are travelling, but whether we are travelling towards our proper end.
The commemoration of Saint Christopher completes this lesson. His name means “Christ-bearer.” Christian devotion remembers the strong man who carried travellers across a dangerous torrent. One night, a child asked to be borne across. As Christopher entered the river, the Child became so heavy that the powerful man feared he would be overwhelmed. Then the Child revealed Himself as Christ, the Lord Who bears the weight of the world.
James receives the chalice. Christopher receives the burden. Both discover that Christ is hidden within what they are asked to carry.
We often imagine that the spiritual life consists in seeking Christ somewhere beyond our ordinary obligations. Yet Christ comes to us beneath the weight of duty. He is present in the child who needs patience, the sick person who needs care, the elderly relative whose weakness constrains our freedom, the soul who asks repeatedly for forgiveness, the daily work that receives no praise, the temptation that must be resisted for the thousandth time.
We ask God for a great vocation while resenting the small burden already placed upon our shoulders. We ask for sanctity while refusing the chalice already standing before us.
The Collect asks that, defended by Saint James, we may please God by our conduct and serve Him “with mind all untroubled.” This tranquillity is the final transformation of the son of thunder. James has not become weak. His strength has been surrendered to God. The soul becomes untroubled not because the road is easy, but because it has ceased bargaining with Divine Providence. It no longer asks whether another man’s chalice is lighter or another man’s throne more splendid. It accepts what God has appointed.
At Holy Communion, the Church gives us the answer to the request with which the Gospel began: “You that have followed Me shall sit upon seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
The throne was not denied to James. It was withheld until he had been made capable of receiving it. Salome asked too soon, but she did not ask for something unreal. Her son reigns with Christ. But he reached the throne by following Christ along the road of sacrifice.
This is the law of the Christian life. The chalice comes before the throne. The Cross comes before the crown. The seed must fall into the earth before it bears fruit. We must lose our life with Christ if we would find it in Him.
Let us therefore cease asking where we shall sit, and ask instead how faithfully we are drinking what God has placed before us. Let us cease measuring our importance, and begin measuring our surrender. Let us allow grace to change anger into courage, ambition into fatherhood, suffering into sacrifice, and the passing days of our earthly life into a true pilgrimage towards heaven.
Saint James, obtain for us the courage to drink the chalice of Christ.
Saint Christopher, obtain for us the strength to carry Christ in those whom He entrusts to us.
And when the chalice is bitter, the burden heavy and the road uncertain, may we answer with the Apostle: “We can”—not because we trust in our own strength, but because He Who calls us is faithful.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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