What Mothers Ask For

The mother of the Apostles James and John famously---and perhaps for them embarrassingly---approaches the Lord Jesus with a heartfelt entreaty that her sons each sit at His right and left in His Kingdom.  At the moment, she does not yet know that this request will entail their “drinking the chalice” of suffering and death before savoring the glory of the Resurrection.  Like any good parent, she asks for the world and all for her offspring.  And Christ directs this instinct to the wise and loving plan of our Heavenly Father, Who knows and provides for our needs before we ask.

As a child at Our Lady of Grace School in Highland, Indiana, I was brought to listen to the challenge of the Gospel at Mass every Monday through Friday---daily Mass was required for us (and so was Sunday)!  I distinctly recall being deeply moved by Jesus’ initial command to Peter and Andrew, James and John to “leave all things”---including their families---to follow Him:  What if the Lord approached me with this command?  What would I do?  I never thought of it at the time, but my Catholic education over time interiorized in me a habit of leaving mother and father and home each morning, slowly shaping this quotidian adventure by grace into a greater openness to embrace the horizon of my vocation---including its necessary familial renunciations.

Throughout most of my Priesthood, I had never deeply thought through the Gospel’s various hints that the Apostles’ families in different ways actually followed their children as their children followed Christ!  The most obvious example is that of Jesus using Peter’s house in Capernaum as a “home base” in His teaching ministry.  But what to make of the discipleship and lobbying of the mother of James and John, who remains apparently as inextricably connected to the lives of her children as to her following of the Lord?

To sharpen the point yet further and present it in more personal, existential terms, I type this meditation in my office at the Queen of Peace rectory, in the very room which once served as the bedroom of the mother of a former Pastor, Fr. Camillo Tirabassi.  She followed her son to his parish.  Fr. Cam’s mother died where I am now sitting.  Until my medical leave for jaw surgery, I never had to consider how during my adult life as a Priest my parents might of necessity become intimately tied to my daily life---and to my suffering.  Up to this past December, I thought that an evening phone call each Sunday, regular visits home for holidays, and the occasional family field trip to my parish sufficed.

When I knew the actual contours of what my jaw surgery would entail and when it was to be scheduled, I made the heartbreaking announcement to my parents at the end of Christmas dinner this past December.  Despite my trying to put the best face on it, the news dropped like a bomb.  Filial reassurances were no match for parental worry.  In fact, both leading up to and following surgery, the worst pain was watching my Mom and Dad suffer with me, and for me, and because of me.

For weeks prior to the initial conversation with them, I begged the Lord to show me the logistics of who would take care of me and how.  The thought of my parents as my primary caregivers just seemed overwhelming and unworkable from both directions.  But yet how could they not be involved in some way?

Some friends of mine, Larry and Judy Garatoni, were God’s answer to my prayers.  They spontaneously came to me and insisted that they would meet me in Florida and attend to my every practical need from surgery through the first weeks of convalescence.  They would open their Florida home to me as to one of their own sons.  It also worked out that my parents---who for the past few years have spent the winter in Florida---were just a few hours’ drive away.  Thanks to the generosity of still other friends, I was able to pay for my parents to stay at my hotel in the days leading up to and following the surgery.  (I figured that this gesture was the least I could do, after Mom and Dad had provided me free room and board for about the first two decades of my life!)  In short, the plan---the Lord’s plan---worked.

Nonetheless it was agonizing to suffer their concern for me.  The bottom line of my parents’ love for us kids was always “do what makes you truly happy.”  At the moment of my jaw troubles, happiness for me involved serious surgery and “drinking the chalice” of suffering (in the form---circumstances would have it---of energy drinks mixed with nauseating medicine five times a day through a plastic splint!).  After surgery I looked pretty beaten up, and my parents had to see my (temporarily) disfigured face.  They had to see me---their eldest and adult son---at his weakest, unable to speak or walk unaided.  Did they ask for this on their wedding day?  Could they have known that this would be included in their vow of union “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health”?  They couldn’t have fully known.  They made an act of faith.

When Christ’s eyes met those of the mother of James and John, He knew the nexus of natural and supernatural love which brought them to that moment and would see them all through the crucible of suffering.  The path of every Christian commitment passes by way of Calvary.  In gazing at the faith of the mother of these Apostles, Jesus also infallibly and with consummate poignancy weighed the boundless suffering that His own Mother---Our Lady of Sorrows---would have to endure for love of Him and His love of her---and their shared love of us.  Out of redemptive love, He allowed it all. 

The mother of the sons of Zebedee followed as far as she followed and did what she did not simply out of ordinary maternal affection, but also because she participated already in the graced maternal faith and charitable solicitude of the Church.  She knew that the life of her family shared in---and was entirely staked on---the family of the Church, the household of God.  For me to be given in my suffering the supportive network of my parents by nature and Judy and Larry Garatoni by grace, I have come to see more clearly what adoption in Christ as children of God our Father and Mary our Mother means:  Only in the family of the Church can we make bold to ask God for everything, and receive even more gifts and good---through suffering---than we could have ever imagined.