You know that Sts. James and John approached Our Lord to ask Him that they might reign with Him, that they might sit at His right and left hand in His kingdom, once He had entered into His glory. Our Lord, in response, said to them, “Can you be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am to be baptized?” (Mk. 10:38) And they said, “We can.” You see in this request the desire to be identified with Our Lord, the desire for a complete and total association, such that Sts. James and John would be inseparable from Our Lord in His kingdom. Of course, there was a merely worldly ambition in this request. However, we are meant to have a similar ambition: we must want to be completely identified with OL. Our Lord says to Sts. James and John: “You do not know what you ask.” And then He proceeds to tell them what they need to do to have their request granted, and predicts that they will indeed accomplish what is necessary. There are three stages in this whole scene: a) the brothers desire to be identified with Our Lord; b) they understand the means necessary to reach that end through Our Lord’s teaching; c) they employ those means by dying for OL. Let me remark in passing how few there are who even make it to the first step. Who wants to be completely identified with Jesus Christ? Is not such a one considered to be a religious fanatic by the world, a fool? Is not such a one obsessive? But who is the fool? Is it the saints who are fools who become fools for Christ, or is it the worldlings who become fools for the world? We, above all people, must have this burning desire to be identified with Our Lord. We, above all people, must understand the wisdom of Christ, and the folly of the world. “ Can you be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am to be baptized?” Of course, Our Lord is speaking about His death. And you see from this that it is not enough for Him to die. If He dies and moves towards us, but we do not move towards Him, then there is no identification. This is why He says, “He who does not take up His cross and follow me is not worthy of Me.” We have to live the life of Christ, repeat that life, we may say. Our Lord issues the call “Follow Me” but He also gives us most powerful means of answering it. These means are the sacraments and the Mass. With St. Thomas the Apostle, once we have embraced this desire of identifying ourselves with Christ, we say, “Let us go and die with Him.” How? Well, firstly, we are baptized. In this sacrament, it is not sufficient for sin to be wiped away. On the contrary, it is necessary for the candidate to “switch sides”, to take on a new life, a new mode of existence. Quite simply, the baptized must be brought into the life of Christ Himself. St. Paul is at pains in many passages to make Catholics understand that their lives are now assimilated to that of Christ. In the early Church, catechumens walked down steps to be immersed or buried in a pool of water before rising up and walking up the other side. This was a symbol, St. Paul remarks in Rom. 6:3-4, of their death and resurrection, mirroring those of OL. As a result, they can “walk in newness of life”; they now live the life of Christ.
