No Pain No Gain
That is the message of today’s Gospel reading (Mk 10:32-45). James and John asked Jesus: “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” And Jesus replied: “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
No servant is greater than his master (Jn 15:20), and our Master suffered a most agonizing trial before his death and resurrection – a ‘cup’ (Lk 22:42) to be consumed before the work of salvation could be ‘finished’ (Jn 19:30). The road to heaven is paved in suffering. Can you drink the chalice of Our Lord?
They said to him, ‘We can.” Jesus said to them, “The chalice that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.
Sanctity consists in suffering.
~St. Therese of Lisuix