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1. The written or spoken WORD is very powerful indeed. In the class room or home, but especially in Scripture the WORD is both an assurance and a challenge. The WORD can excite us. It can move us to action. But remember by it we are also judged and indicted.

2. True story. Back in 1956 when I was in the 1st grade here at Blessed Sacrament with Sister Marie Kathleen as my teacher, we had taken a test and were handing them back. As we passed them down the rows I noticed that a number of them that had the A’s also had a nice BIG STAR at the top. Mine…well I had a C of some kind. As I sat there and thought, probably out of ENVY and then PLANNING for my parents to see the paper, I took and placed at the top, my own VERY BIG STAR. About that same time Sister came down the aisle and saw my addition to the top. She promptly and sternly asked me to REMOVE that STAR. She Ended with the words, “You only Get the Star…when you earn it.”

I learned two lessons that day. 1) being GREEN with envy over others talents or things is not becoming to the Christian person. And 2) that Blood, Sweat and Tears are apart of the human struggle towards the coveted BIG STAR.

3. While no Christian thinks that Jesus came to make us HEALTY, PROPEROUS or WISE, during our few years here on earth, we are still perplexed and find it hard to accept His Word that the way to ultimate Glory or Eternal life is through the ‘WAY of the CROSS’.

4. The words of the 1st reading we hear today, are a part of the longer text from Isaiah 52 & 53, which is used on Good Friday. It is known as the 4th Servant Oracle of the SUFFERING SERVANT. The church takes this Sunday to revisit this Old Testament prophecy along with the Gospel prediction of Jesus death, because she feels the Divine values of the cross which are SUFFERING and SERVANTHOOD are very important indeed in forming our Christian way of life.

5. Isaiah’s prophetic words teach us in a very real sense, the Messiah Jesus as God, would take on our human nature. An act in it self that would be quite humbling. But Is 53:4-5 says He would be “…rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering…yet ours were the sufferings He bore, our sorrows He Carried…he was CRUSHED for our SINS.” He would do this so we could become adopted Son and Daughters of God His Father. There will have to be no GREEN BONE in His Body.

And then He would received the GLORY or BIG STAR that came with His selfless and humble act of accepting TORTURE and DEATH on our behalf. Is. 53-12 “Therefore I will give him his portion among the great, and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty.”

6. Our Gospel is a part of the last of three predictions of Jesus’ Death. The importance of which, He was trying OVER and OVER to get His Apostles to understand. But the words of this Gospel 3-Peat about that Suffering Servant from Isaiah, again FELL on DEAF EARS, as James and John BOLDLY exercise their hope that they would each have a lofty position in the Earthly Kingdom they believed Jesus was soon to usher in.

It was at their attempt to secure those positions of status that the other 10 apostles became VEXED and ENVIOUS. They too wanted the BIG STAR. It’s not that the apostles didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, they DID. It was the hope of the Israelite nation for five-hundred years that a POLITICAL MESSIAH would come to secure the promised land, throw out All ruling foreign nations, and reestablish Israel as it was under Kings David and Solomon; the pinnacle NATION of the world. Much of the Israelite nation believed that time had come. And a week later Jesus would ride the donkey into Jerusalem’s East Gate, solidifying their belief.

It was in all their lofty hopes that the Teacher Jesus in this Gospel, had to bring them back to the REALITY of the world and their POSITION in it as His disciples. It is a SPIRITUAL solution he offered…not a political one. And that Spiritual Solution comes about in the MIGHTY COMBO of WORDS: SUFFERING and SERVANT.

7. Last week Jesus WORDS encouraged us to devoid ourselves of the trappings of a life that has many things to distract us. This week he offers a Cross and Servitude. How many times have we heard those enjoinments and we choose to ignore their meaning and continue to look for ‘Easy street’ and ‘Earthly Glory’ in DAILY events? If we believe in the WORDS, we also Teach the words we believe in. So went Jesus, so went the Church, Sr. Marie Kathleen, and my parents.

So now it makes sense. Sister Marie Kathleen would never have sent me home, or my parents have kept their precious child home because I found school a hardship. It is precisely in temporary hardship that students find success. It is precisely in the WORDS: CROSS and SERVICE as we move ourselves to embrace their meaning in our lives for others and for Christ, that we can look forward to the BIG STAR .

Hope you too can benefit from Sisters words, “you get the Star… when you earn it.” But more importantly use well Jesus words, “the son of man has come not to be served, but to serve.” That’s our call too.