Master·evangeli.net
Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all...”
Jesus, "the Servant of God", predicts His Passion
EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)Today, we reach the second one of the three predictions of the Passion that stand for Jesus’ journey up to Jerusalem. To this teaching of the Lord, as usual, follows the disciples’ defiance. Jesus fixes (us) them: The ascent of God occurs precisely in the descent to humble service, in the descent of love.
In Jesus Christ, God has revealed Himself in His descending: He did not boast of His divine condition, but emptied Himself by taking on the nature of a slave until surrendering to the "death on a cross" (cf. Phil 2:6-9). The Passion predictions reach their culmination in the statement that follows the third prediction: "For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45).
—Jesus is the "servant" of God who suffers and dies, whom the Prophet Isaiah had foretold in his songs. "Service" is the true form of rule, and it gives us an insight into God’s way of being "Lord".
