NOTES for Mar 10:38

The apostles try to understand Christ by ordinary human logic. Their everyday ideas have not yet been transformed by the light they have recently begun to receive from the Teacher, and therefore they themselves "do not know what they ask."

Many of us come to God in order to receive. And He gives us much, but we insatiably demand more and more, and in the end, as in the well-known tale, we find ourselves beside a broken trough.

Meanwhile Christ Himself, from the point of view of His successful surroundings, remained beside a "broken trough" in Gethsemane and on Golgotha. To everyone who wants to be with Him, He offers a share in what looks to those around Him like defeat and failure. But only in this way, through the cross, does one come to the Resurrection. By accepting at least a part of His self-emptying, only a tiny part, since Christ does not want us to shoulder what we cannot bear, one can receive the right to share with Him the joy of Triumph. And it is precisely into this joy that the One who came not "to be served, but to serve" wants to lead us.