A discouraged pastor approached St. John Vianney for advice. His parish was going downhill, attendance was dropping, and there was a general malaise among the people. Vianney told him that his parish was like an old house in need of many repairs. Rather than tackle the whole thing at once, concentrate on the fireplace. If there was no fire in the fireplace, nothing else could get done. He told the pastor to find two “logs” that were on fire with God. Put them together and they would feed each other. As that fire began to blaze, put another log in with them, then another and so on. When there was a powerful fire in the heart of the parish, everything else would begin to fall into place.
This is apparently the plan that God revealed to St. John Vianney himself. Being intellectually below par, he was sent to the relatively unknown town of Ars in France. He was a nobody priest assigned to a never-heard-of church. As soon as he took the assignment, he began to pray and ask God to start a fire in the fireplace. The fire started small and soon began to blaze so that Catholics throughout France flocked to Ars to go to confession. It is said that during the final ten years of his life he spent up to as many as 15 hours a day hearing confessions. This humble priest of no renown started a fire that burns to this very day. Parish priests look to him as their role model for ministry.
Contrast this insignificant priest with James and John (Matthew 20:20-28).
“The mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something. He said to her, ‘What you wish?’ She answered him, ‘Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left in your Kingdom.’”
No doubt James and John put their mother up to this, as they imagined themselves being high dignitaries in Jesus’ Kingdom. It seemed like Jesus was prepping Peter for top leader and maybe his brother Andrew too. That meant the sons of Zebedee would fit in somewhere down the ladder. The time seemed ripe for them to voice their ambitions.
“Jesus said in reply, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink.’”
Sitting near Jesus’ throne meant becoming targets for the kind of abuse Jesus received. Drinking from the same chalice as Jesus, entailed sharing in his destiny. Leadership was no cakewalk.
Jesus told them that their values were upside down. They were thinking the way the Gentiles thought. Jesus told them:
“But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant…Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
James and John would wear themselves out serving the needs of the Christian community, and in time would give their lives as ransoms for many. It took them much longer to learn Jesus’ lesson than it did St. John Vianney. In time, however, the fire of the Holy Spirit began to burn inside James and John and helped keep the flames alive in the early Church.
We ask: “Am I called to be one of the blazing ‘logs’ in my parish?”
