The Gentle Art of Standing In Line

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.
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.
For 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 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."

The apostles are going to be ticked off at me when I get to heaven.  It is because if I have said it once, I've said it a dozen times, they just don't get it.  They were on a teaching journey with Jesus, one where the public was not invited and Jesus is telling them how He will be turned over to men and He will be killed and raised on the third day.  He spent a lot of time teaching them what it meant to be a servant and how they should serve one another.  So, during a break in the teaching, what do boys do?  They argue among themselves as to who is the greatest.  Jesus showed how great He was as a teacher, He used their discussion to bolster what He had been teaching them.  He told them that the greatest among them would be the servant of all. 

We have never learned this lesson as well as Jesus would have us. We just spent a weekend watching the pageantry of a royal wedding.  Pomp and circumstance enough for all!  We saw royalty, the stars of Hollywood each dressed in their finery. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and as royal affairs go, relatively simple with only six hundred or so filling the chapel.   Every one of the people in attendance were people of rank. The queen, of course, at the top and everyone else filling a position beneath her.  This is as it should be in the normal state of things.  For an example of what Jesus was teaching please imagine the queen passing out appetizers or Prince Philip handing out towels in the men's room.  What Jesus is teaching is that the people who rank the highest in God's eyes are those that do the most for His people because of or maybe in spite of their social rank. 

One thing I saw was the humility of Prince Harry.  He has a lot of his mother in him and has a feeling for people who are normally cast away by society.  There was joy in his eyes as he played with the children in the poor nation he has taken under his wing.  Harry gets it and so does his new bride, Meghan who also feels for those that society in general keeps on the fringes.  I think that a new day is coming to the royals and in the future, there will be less of the raised noses and more of the rolled up sleeves. 

This is what Jesus wants of us.  We are not to stand in line, we are to allow others before us in that line.  When we are standing and waiting, we can do much to improve the lives of those around, just a smile or a kind word could help someone who was having a bad day, have a better one. We all have to stand in line sometime, we all are on the same line when it comes to heaven, each of us waiting our turn.  Why not put that time to good use and give freely of your life to those around you.  What you received for free and in love, you can pour out and receive more and in doing so you can make the world a better place and give yourself the perfect joy of being a servant of the one God.  

Pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory today.  Remember, one day you might be one of them.