Dearest brothers and sisters, one day Jesus said: “… learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” (Mt 11:29) The Lenten season that we are experiencing allows us to question ourselves and to understand if we are truly learning something from Jesus if we are trying to look like the Father by having the same attitudes as Jesus, doing the same things that he did, obeying the will of God which manifests itself in his Word and everyday life. If we are not yet in line with the Gospel proposal or we are only partially or sometimes consistent with it, then we ask God the grace of our conversion, a change of our mentality.

The first reading already indicates an exemplary attitude of Jeremiah which is absolutely consistent with what Jesus did. Jeremiah is persecuted by someone who cannot tolerate his preaching and plotted against him, slandering him. Jeremiah prays to God complaining that they are digging a pit for him. We would have expected something as: “Lord, punish them, chastise them!” And instead the unexpected conclusion of the prayer is “Turn away your wrath from them”. Although they are doing wrong to him, he prays for them as Jesus did: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”. (Lk 23:34)

The Gospel we have heard, in telling the strange story of the mother of James and John who goes to recommend her sons, offers us a real lifestyle.

All evangelists have never hidden that the disciples of Jesus thought that the Messiah must be a political liberator, a leader who would expel the hated Romans and establish a new kingdom.

Jesus had just finished foretelling for the third time his persecution at the hands of the chief priests and the scribes, his death at the hands of the Gentiles  and his resurrection. And behold, the two brothers sons of Zebedee, James and John, nicknamed Boanerges (Sons of thunder) want to settle down. They even want a place of honor in the new kingdom announced by Jesus and, a little naively, they send their mother to Jesus. Perhaps they thought that in front of the request of their mother Jesus would have softened and would have said yes. It is proof that they did not understand anything of what Jesus said.

Jesus, unperturbed, asks the two who were surely nearby waiting for the outcome of the interview: “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?”. Drinking the cup is a way of saying: “Are you willing to join in my suffering?” In words they answer: “We can” but facing the cross they will escape. The cross was the real throne of Jesus but it was not easy to accept it. It will take the resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit to give the disciples the courage that will allow some of them to give up their lives for their Master in the proclamation of the Gospel.

Sitting at Jesus’ left and right in the kingdom: this issue is a decision of the Father. The parable of the last judgment of Mt 25 immediately came to my mind. There is a right and a left but it serves to separate those who served Jesus in the poor from those who were indifferent to the needs of their neighbors. Here is who will be on the right and who will be on the left.

Here then is the key word of today’s Gospel: being servant! Jesus takes advantage of the unable attempt of the Boanerges to instruct the twelve on a lifestyle that he will have to characterize them from now on.

Being servants: it means a lifestyle founded on service in favor of the life of others. To be servant is not doing a little good but giving a precise orientation to my life, offering myself, making my life a continuous gift. In the kingdom there is no place for those who use the lives of others, for those who exploit, for those who force others not to live but to survive. There is no place for those looking for prestigious places to get rich. There is no place for those who exploit situations of violence and war to their own advantage. There is no place for us men and women religious, priests, if we have made our mission a job to make money and fatten up our bank accounts.

Let us ask the Lord for the grace of conversion so that our personal and community life has sharing and service as its pillars!