“Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mk 10:38).
This question stands at the beginning of my vocation to the priesthood. I can still vividly recall sitting before the Blessed Sacrament in the Portiuncula Chapel at Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio, in the late hours of a warm July night and hearing these words of our Lord echo in the depths of my heart: “Can you drink the cup that I drink?”
Originally posed to the sons of Zebedee, Jesus’ question reminds all those who aspire to share his glory that there is only one way: the way that he himself would travel.
Indeed, the “baptism” of this verse refers not to Jesus’ submersion in the waters of the river Jordan but to his passion-baptism in Jerusalem where he would be submerged in suffering.
The image of the cup further reveals that this suffering is not a generic kind of suffering but rather a vicarious acceptance of punishment destined for sinners, signified in the prophets by “the cup of (the Lord’s) wrath” which the wicked must “(drain) to the dregs” (Is 51:17 cf. Jer 25:15, Ez 23:32-34). Jesus, of course, would himself drink this bitter cup on our behalf and thereby turn the cup of wrath into a “cup of blessing” (1 Cor 10:16) for the very sinners for whom it was meant to be a “staggering” punishment.
This is the same “cup” that Catholic priests have the immense privilege of raising each day at the altar of God.
I had the opportunity to reflect on this privilege in 2013 when I was asked to share my experience as a 10-year jubilarian at our biannual presbyteral assembly in Rochester. My preparations stirred the memory of being a newly ordained priest in the Cathedral of St. Paul rectory and having the startling realization that I could not be happy as a priest unless I gave everything. I should not have been startled since I had already engraved this realization — and desire — at the base of the cup of my own ordination chalice with the words “Totus Tuus” (meaning “totally yours” Jesus through Mary). Jesus invites the priest to give himself totally to him because he — our “great high priest” (Heb 4:14) — has given himself totally to us. Indeed, Jesus loved us “to the end” (Jn 13:1), that is, he drank his own cup “to the dregs,” and wishes each of his priests to taste and see the same paradox in their own lives that when giving ourselves totally to others, the cup of vicarious suffering becomes a cup of immense joy.
In this edition of The Catholic Spirit, you will meet this year’s priest jubilarians. You will see how the “word” that I have written in this article has become “flesh” in their priestly lives and ministries. They have striven to “drink the cup” of their priestly calling to the dregs and have blessed thousands upon thousands of faithful in this archdiocese in so doing. The photos of three of those priests who share their stories and their faces bear witness to the fact that all of the priests share the same love for their vocation as the late Archbishop Harry Flynn, who would say to young men who were discerning a priestly calling, “If I had a hundred lives to live, I would live each one of them as a Catholic priest.”
Today, I echo these words to the 13 men who will be ordained priests at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Jesus will ask each of them on May 25, “Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” And together they will respond, “We can!”
