29th Sunday B, homily by Brother Bartomeu

Dear brothers and sisters, in the reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah earlier we heard: "The Servant, crushed by suffering, has pleased the Lord. My servant will justify the multitudes; he will take away their iniquities". These words inevitably brought to mind Holy Week, the Passion of Jesus. In fact, this reading was chosen to introduce us to the Gospel reading we have just heard. And, in fact, with the continued reading of the Gospel according to Saint Mark, we have already been accompanying Jesus for a few Sundays, when he "began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, be killed, and then rise again three days later" (Mk 8:31). And then: "They were going through Galilee, and Jesus did not want anyone to know about it, because he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, 'The Son of Man is being handed over into the hands of men; they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise again'". But the disciples did not understand these words and were afraid to question him" (Mk 9:30-32).
"The disciples did not understand these words. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, instead of seeking to be "the last of all and the servant of all" (Mk 9:35), asked to sit, one on the right and the other on the left of Jesus, in his glory. They really hadn't understood anything!
But their lack of understanding gave Jesus the opportunity to return to his words to help us understand them. The Son of Man," he tells us, "did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. "To give his life as a ransom for many. "My servant will justify the multitudes; he will take up their iniquities," said the prophet.
And to James and John, who did not know what they were asking, Jesus said: "You will drink the cup that I am about to drink, and you will be baptised with the baptism into which I am about to be immersed". And the cup and the baptism are images of the passion of the Son of Man, who will be delivered into the hands of men; they will kill him and, three days after his death, he will rise again.
These words are also for us, who, like the sons of Zebedee, must not seek to sit on the right or left of Jesus in his glory, but to drink the cup that he drank and be baptised with the baptism in which he was immersed, and so identify ourselves with him.
And this baptism and this cup are first and foremost the sacraments. "We who have been baptised into Christ Jesus have all been baptised into his death" (Romans 6:3), wrote Saint Paul to the Romans. And to the Corinthians he wrote: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion with the blood of Christ" (1 Cor 10:16).
It is by living as baptized in his death and in communion with Christ's blood that we will be able to say, as Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).