How Do We Enter Greatness in God’s Standard?

by Fr. Jess Ty  |  10/20/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

According to Dr. John Bergsma: The key to receiving lasting glory is Jesus Himself, and the center of Jesus’ mission is His freely laying down His life for the sake of us sinners. Leaders of this world, Jesus says, exercise leadership for their own benefit. This is the way Satan understands leadership—for the benefit of the one in authority.

But Jesus inverts this image—leadership is for the benefit of the one who is lead. Therefore, the leader is a servant, and the greatest leader is the greatest servant. Jesus does not impose His Divine authority over us. He does not display his power so that we will fear and honor Him. Instead, He comes to us in a form of a servant. Though He is the King of kings, He “has not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Jesus explains that “whoever wishes to be great among you” must follow this pattern. His own way of life reveals how we, His disciples, must live to provide service to others if we are to enter glory.

This paradoxical way—the way to greatness by means of humble service; the way to life by means of death—was prophesied by Isaiah in our first reading. “He gives his life as an offering for sin… through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.” Jesus is the “Suffering Servant” that Isaiah prophesied. The idea that one innocent person’s suffering could benefit others who are guilty radically changes our whole idea about suffering. What seems to our nature to be either an injustice or a punishment is suddenly transformed into a supreme act of selfless love, a gift, a “ransom” and a redemptive suffering. This is God’s extraordinary answer to the problem of sin. This is how the great mercy of God is at work: “He allows evil so that greater good will come out of it.”

Our glory is based entirely on the infinite mercy and compassion that Jesus our High Priest shows for sinners. Our task is to accept Him and consecrate our lives to Him who loved us unto the end, who suffered, died, and rose from the dead for us. Let us give Him and the Holy Spirit permission to work in our lives, and with Peter let us rejoice to the extent that we share in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed we may also rejoice exultantly. (1 Peter 4:13)