Today's first reading (2 Corinthians 4:7-15) vaguely reminded me of a song we sing at mass sometimes: "We hold the death of the Lord deep in our hearts...." So I was humming that tune as I reflected on these scriptures, thinking about what it means to hold Jesus in our hearts. Then I realized something: while I like the song, it's not quite right at least not in relation to today's readings.

 

When we use the word "heart", we often don't mean our physical beating hearts, but a kind of emotional place in our minds, where we reflect on things that are dear to us. "Heart" seems to mean more of a feeling of loving toward whatever it is we have in mind.

 

But Paul here is being far more physical than that: we hold the death of Christ in our bodies. We are meant to touch, smell, breath that death - not because we are morbid, but because in taking on Jesus' death in a real way, Paul says that we also proclaim his life. Jesus' life and death - BOTH - are part of our central mystery of faith that we proclaim each week in the mass because his death and life are inseparable for Christians. So Christ becomes the "treasure" in our earthen vessels - our bodies.

 

Yet that leads to a bit of a practical puzzle. If this is about our bodies, what does it mean to hold Jesus' death in our bodies? What might it mean to live that way?

 

Today's gospel offers a clue (Matthew 20:20-28). The Apostle James' mother comes and asks Jesus if John and James will sit on his right and his left in the Kingdom of God. Jesus answers by asking if they can drink the chalice he will drink from. Often, this passage is interpreted as foreshadowing Jesus' death - because in the Garden just before his death he prays to let this cup pass, to allow him not to drink death.

 

Can they drink death with Jesus? Certainly, many Christians (including our brothers and sisters who have fled Mosul recently) have faced death in the name of Jesus, literally a bodily death. The martyrs are witnesses of how to live Jesus' death. 

 

But holding Jesus' death in our bodies isn't limited to our physical death. Jesus goes on to tell how in contrast to gentile leaders who have to make their authority known, leaders among Christians must be servants first. To be a servant, there's a way in which you die a little death to your own ego, in order that you can serve and be present to others. To hold Jesus' death in our bodies is to seek always to serve others. 

 

James, whose feast day we observe today, is an example for us of many ways we can live Jesus' death in our bodies. His martyrdom is the only one of the Apostles recorded in the scriptures (Acts 12:1-12) and is therefore considered the first of the Apostles to be martyred.

 

- Jana M. Bennett