Can you drink the chalice<\/strong> that I shall drink? That’s the question Christ actually asks, today’s feast, when a mother comes requesting glory for her two sons. Beloved, grace and peace to you: however you arrive here, tired or hopeful, certain or doubting, welcomed elsewhere or shut out elsewhere. Bloom is not a room you have to earn your way into. Sit with us a moment, offered today in the spirit of a low Mass \u2014 Word, prayer, and offering, without pretense to more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Show Image<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday we sat with the Vigil of St. James<\/span>, anticipating today’s actual solemnity. Today the Church celebrates James the Greater directly \u2014 one of the inner three among the apostles, present at the Transfiguration and in Gethsemane, and, per Acts 12:1-2, the first apostle martyred, beheaded under Herod Agrippa. Today’s added commemoration, St. Christopher, gets only a second Collect, Secret, and Postcommunion, without displacing James’s own full Mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps 138:17; Ps 138:1-2)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n To me, Your friends, O God, are made exceedingly honorable; their principality is exceedingly strengthened. O Lord, You have probed me and You know me; You know when I sit and when I stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Confirmed, directly sourced \u2014 Missale Romanum 1962, proper to St. James the Greater, not adapted)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Protect Your people and make them holy, O Lord, so that, guarded by the help of Your Apostle James, they may please You by their conduct and serve You with peace of mind. Through our Lord\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Collect for St. Christopher, Martyr \u2014 confirmed, directly sourced, not adapted)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who celebrate the martyrdom of blessed Christopher, through his intercession, may be strengthened in Your love. Through our Lord\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 Corinthians 4:9-15<\/a>, Douay-Rheims<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Brethren: I think that God hath set forth us apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honourable, but we without honour. Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode. And we labour, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it. We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now. I write not these things to confound you; but I admonish you as my dearest children. For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Ps 44:17-18; John 15:16)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You shall make them princes through all the land; they shall remember Your name, O Lord. The place of your fathers your sons shall have; therefore shall nations praise You. I have chosen you out of the world, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthew 20:20-23,<\/a> Douay-Rheims<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At that time, then came to Him the mother of the sons of Zebedee with her sons, adoring and asking something of Him. Who said to her: What wilt thou? She saith to Him: Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom. And Jesus answering, said: You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? They say to Him: We can. He saith to them: My chalice indeed you shall drink; but to sit on My right or left hand, is not Mine to give to you, but to them for whom it is prepared by My Father.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Salome \u2014 tradition names her as the mother of James and John \u2014 asks for a very specific, very human thing: the best seats, reserved in advance, for her own two sons. It’s not an unusual request. Most parents, given a straight shot at Christ Himself, would ask for exactly this kind of security for their own children. What’s unusual is Christ’s answer. He doesn’t scold her ambition or shame the sons for wanting it. He simply reframes the entire question: can you drink the chalice<\/strong> that I shall drink?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s the whole move worth sitting with. She asked about a seat. He answered about a cost. Seats are about position \u2014 where you rank, who outranks you, who gets to sit closest to power. A chalice, in this context, is about what you’re willing to swallow: suffering, danger, the actual price of following someone who was, at that exact point in the story, walking directly toward His own execution in Jerusalem. James and John say “we can” before they’ve had time to think it through, the way people often answer big questions before they understand what they’ve agreed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s what makes today’s feast different from an ordinary object lesson about misplaced ambition: James’s “we can” turned out to be true. Per Acts 12:1-2, he became the first of the twelve apostles executed, beheaded under Herod Agrippa within roughly a decade of asking, through his mother, for the seat instead of the cup. He got the chalice. Whether he ever got the seat is a question Christ Himself declined to answer, since that “is not Mine to give… but to them for whom it is prepared by My Father.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today’s Epistle describes what that chalice actually looked like in practice, not in theory: “we are made a spectacle to the world… fools for Christ… without honour… hunger and thirst… naked… buffeted… the offscouring of all.” Paul isn’t complaining here. He’s giving an honest inventory of what following Christ actually cost the apostles, set directly against the Corinthians’ comfortable assumption that they’d already “reigned” without needing to suffer for it. The chalice was never metaphorical for any of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a story sometimes told of a man who served as a parish sacristan for over forty years \u2014 arriving before dawn to light the candles, staying after everyone else had gone home to lock up, never once asked to sit anywhere near the front, never given a title beyond the one nobody else wanted. When he finally retired, the parish realized none of them could actually remember a single Sunday he’d missed. He never asked for the seat. He’d simply been drinking the cup, quietly, for four decades, one ordinary morning at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether or not the specific language of “chalice” or “kingdom” means anything to you personally, the plain principle holds regardless: real commitment to anything worth doing rarely announces itself by securing the best seat first. It shows up, unglamorously, in whether you’re actually willing to pay what the thing costs \u2014 long before anyone offers you a reward for having paid it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So beloved, whatever version of “the best seat” you’ve caught yourself angling for lately \u2014 recognition, credit, being seen as the one who did the most \u2014 today’s feast asks a much more specific question underneath it: not whether you’d like the seat, but whether you’ve actually been drinking the cup. James said yes before he understood the question. Most of us get the rare gift of a little more time to mean it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Receive, O Lord, this small offering made in memory of an apostle who said “we can” to a cup he didn’t yet understand, and grant that our own commitments might be measured by what we’re willing to drink rather than what we hope to be given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (For St. Christopher)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Having received our gifts and prayers, O Lord, we beseech You, cleanse us by Your heavenly mysteries, and graciously hear us. Through our Lord\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Benediction \u2014 two readings, one truth)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For those who hold this in faith:<\/em> Lord, You asked James and John if they could drink the cup before You ever mentioned the seats they’d actually asked for. Ask us the same honest question about whatever we’re currently seeking, and give us the courage to answer it truthfully rather than eagerly. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those still finding their footing:<\/em> If you’ve spent years doing the real, unglamorous work \u2014 the early mornings, the last-one-out, the thing nobody thanks you for \u2014 you were never overlooked by the only measure that actually matters. You’d already answered the real question, whether or not anyone ever asked you the version about the seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Word on Today’s Feast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Introit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Collect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Commemoration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Epistle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Offering (Homily)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Secret<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Commemoration Secret<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Holding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFrequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n