2.  Our Responsorial Psalm is Ps 54:3-4, 5, 6 and 8:

Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee,
but he did not wish anyone to know about it.
He was teaching his disciples and telling them,
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men
and they will kill him,
and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”
But they did not understand the saying,
and they were afraid to question him.

It is almost humorous—almost, but not really—that the disciples cannot understand Jesus’ “saying” here, because he is not using a parable, metaphor, or any other literary device.  He teaches them plainly and literally about the passion, death, and resurrection, yet they cannot figure it out.

The disciples have real trouble understanding Jesus.  Sometimes they take him literally when he is speaking in figures:

15 And [Jesus] cautioned them, saying, “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”  16 And they discussed it with one another, saying, “We have no bread.”

But here in today’s Gospel, they cannot understand his literal saying, because they think he is speaking in figures.  Thus, the struggle of biblical interpretation—concerning what to interpret literally, and what figuratively—began already with the disciples.

Part of the reason the disciples cannot understand Jesus here is that the their sensibilities, just like our own, are offended and repulsed by the notion that God’s Chosen One should have to suffer and die.  We are also offended and repulsed by the notion that we might have to suffer and die with God’s Chosen One!  It is all so paradoxical and counter-intuitive.  We’d rather live in a world where good guys always win and bad guys always lose, rather than this world, where the good often suffer.

Yet the disciples, and we ourselves, should not forget: “after his death the Son of Man will rise”!  There is truth, there is vindication, there is final justice and final mercy—but it requires faith to believe in it, because it will not be visible until we pass through the curtain of death.

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.”
Taking a child, he placed it in the their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”

As we mentioned above, the disciples here are falling into “selfish ambition.”  They have a worldly notion of what it means to be a leader, of what it means to be in authority.  They think of it in terms of self-aggrandizement and personal privilege.  Jesus turns their paradigm on it’s head. “If you wish to be first, be the last of all and the servant of all.”Then Jesus, who is the “first” of all of them, compares himself to a little child: “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me …”  There is a connection between Jesus’ teaching on leadership and the example of the little child (cf. Is. 11:6: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb … and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them) that the other Gospels make more explicit.  To be “the last of all and the servant of all” is to make oneself like a little child.Let’s ponder what being like a little child means.  Children have little or no money.  They don’t boss others around, but have to obey what their parents and other authorities say.  They are also too young for, and do not engage in, marital relations.  So we might say: they are poor, obedient, and chaste.That’s why it seems to me there is a certain genius in what the Church asks of her elite spiritual “commandos”: poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The vows of religious life are the vows of a spiritual childhood.  And while diocesan priests do not take these three vows in the same form, they do commit themselves de facto to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to their bishop; so what we are saying applies to them as well.  The Church turns to her priests and religious for leadership; these persons are qualified for leadership, in part, because they have made themselves “last and servant of all” by committing themselves to a life of perpetual “childhood.”  The vows of religious life are profoundly rooted in the Gospel Jesus preached.

But of course, this Gospel Reading as implications for everyone, no matter what our state in life.  Though there are many angles we could develop, let’s content ourselves for now with meditating on the example of spiritual childhood, of making ourselves “last” and “servant.”

We are surrounded by many sufferings, trials, persecutions direct and indirect.  They may come from enemies, as was the situation for the author of Wisdom in our First Reading, or for David in the Psalm.  The struggles may come from other members of the church, as we saw in the Second Reading, or even from rivalry among those who ought to be setting a good example as leaders of the Church (i.e. the apostles) as we see in the Gospel.  Or, we may struggle internally, as St. James points out.  In whatever form, we find the truth of Jesus words: “In this world, you will have trouble” (John 16:33a).

We can respond to this trouble by becoming bitter, angry, hardened, or discouraged, or losing faith and giving up entirely.  But the Reading this Sunday call us to walk with Jesus to our cross as “children.”  What does this mean in practice?  One virtue highlighted in the Readings is gentleness: the righteous man in Wisdom is tested for his “gentleness”; James highlights “gentleness” as a characteristic of the Wisdom that is above; Jesus sets an example of gentleness in embracing the little child in the Gospel Reading.  Perhaps gentleness is an attribute of spiritual childhood we could focus on in the coming week: learning to respond to hostility with a soft answer, to fight the urge to lash out in anger when offended, to accept misfortunes or contradictions willingly rather than with reluctance.  This isn’t possible on our own power: we will need to pray a lot for God’s strength, for the grace of the Holy Spirit, and meditate on Jesus’ words of encouragement: “But be of good cheer!  I have overcome the world” (John 16:33b).