TOO MUCH INFORMATION

There is a common expression: “Too much information!” We usually use it when people tell us details about their lives that we don’t want or need to know. Today, when James and John ask Jesus a simple question, making their request for places of honor in the kingdom, a simple answer might have been in order. Instead, as he often does, Jesus answers a question with a question; today it’s about drinking the cup of suffering.

Then, once the others are indignant over James and John’s outrageous request, he proceeds to give them what may have been “too much information” for followers who were simply interested in the pursuit of glory. But this information, though it can sometimes seem “too much” for us, is essential for our lives as disciples. In Isaiah, in Hebrews, and in Mark today, we learn this information. It is in suffering, in weakness, in self-giving service to others, that we come to understand the kingdom. It is the information we need to find our place and come to be honored in the reign of God

As election campaigns move into high gear, sometimes the phrase “the Catholic vote” is heard. It’s an interesting concept, since Catholics started out in this country as a very fragile group: fewer than forty thousand of us at the time of the first census in 1790, and only about 2 percent of the population by 1830. It was a priestless church for all intents and purposes, layled clusters of Catholics waiting patiently for the occasional visit of a priest, sustained by gathering when they could on Sunday for devotional prayer like litanies and the rosary. They tried to hold on to their ancestral faith as best they could. Archbishop Jean-Louis Cheverus told one family in Maine to “every day say your prayers on your knees with affection, and every Sunday gather to hear the Gospel, to pray in common, and to quiz the children on the catechism.”

Inevitably, some became Protestant, but many more stayed Catholic from generation to generation, with very little encouragement or sacramental ministry from the clergy. Archbishop John Carroll, the first American bishop, tried to make Church law flexible: shortening the length of the fast before Communion, easing the Lenten fast, and even relaxing the rule of Sabbath rest at harvest time. Catholicism in England had been quietly sustained in this way for two centuries, and the first American Catholics carried on as had their ancestors, providing a fertile soil for the unprecedented success and phenomenal.