It wasn’t until recently that I figured out why it bothers me to hear people say to me that they want to change the world. Obviously, the world needs change, but something just goes up my spine when I hear of someone wanting to bring this change and I never could figure out why; that is until recently. It was then that I realized the previously unrecognized obvious question: What is your vision of a changed world?

Many radicals of the left and of the right wanted to change the world and many did, but the question is are we better off because of it? Karl Marx created a world of hatred and oppression, whether he intended to or not. He changed the world, but not to a better place. Indeed, he believed as part of his change that 20% of the population needed to be eliminated. He never enacted those policies but his successors did including Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. They brought change, but an unhappy change. This is why the question is so important: “What is your vision of a changed world?”

In today’s gospel we see James and John, Zebedee’s sons ask to be on the right and left respectively in Jesus’ kingdom. Now, we must remember that they are imagining Jesus will be a King like David. A political entity that oversees the sovereign nation of the Jews, freed from foreign control. Jesus stops them and points out to them that indeed they will suffer for their decision, but it is not His to give the positions they desire. Why?

Remember, this is Mark’s gospel and in Mark one has to add the rest of the story. Mark gives us the barest of details, we have to fill in the rest. If they felt they could sit on either side of Jesus, then clearly they felt that they would be most effective in understanding and implementing Jesus’ vision for His Kingdom, unlike the other disciples. It is here we learn that not only are they wrong on that account, Jesus is not implementing his own vision, he is implementing the vision of His Father. Therefore, it is not Jesus, but His Father who alone can decide who will have what power as what is being implemented is the Father’s vision.

This brings us to our own place in God’s world. Are you where you planned to be at this point in your life? If not, before you get down on yourself for not being the CEO of the planet or whatever you dreamed your future to be, is it possible you are doing exactly what Jesus wants of you?

I cite this in the example of Fr. Walter Czizek, S.J. This Jesuit priest who grew up in the streets of New Jersey saw himself in the middle of the last century as doing great work of Jesus and converting thousands. It did not happen. In fact, serving with the Jesuits in Eastern Europe under a severe persecution by the Soviets, Fr. Czizek, S.J. ended up arrested and placed for five years in solitary confinement in Lubianka Prison in the Soviet Union. It was there that the Soviets broke him. This once strong man who planned to do great things for Jesus, ended up being tortured and confessing to the false accusation of being a spy for the Vatican. It was the lowest point of his life and he returned to his solitary cell after signing the confession a broken man who caved to the torturous pressure of the Soviets. However, it was there that he learned he was never called to be the person he thought he would be, God needed him for other things.

Afterward, he was sentenced to 10 years hard labor in the GULAG system. It was there that he secretly carried out his role as priest, with other priests similarly sentenced. There, they brought forth the sacraments to the prisoners, mass and confession. Talk about doing powerful things for God, Fr. Czizek brought the sacraments to the GULAG’S of Siberia. It was also there that he developed his spirituality of doing good work for the Soviet Union. Serving as a slave and forced to help build houses, he rejected the temptation to which many of his fellow prisons succumbed. He, unlike them, did not attempt to sabotage the Soviet project, but instead saw his work as serving God. Therefore, he worked not to build poor houses in rebellion for his slave status, but tried to do his best work as a slave. He saw his master not as the Soviet Union, but as God himself. Fr. Czizek, did powerful things for God, but nothing that he planned or for that matter could he have planned.

How about you? Are you happy where you are, or do you wish you were the rich, rock star, the baseball player, the high stakes lawyer, etc.  you dreamed of being when you were in high school? (I planned to be a world famous disc jockey and had my radio debut, on the famous WBCN-FM in 1976 performing a comedy skit I wrote. Obviously, those plans did not happen despite my good start.) Maybe the reason why you never achieved those dreams is that God wanted you where you are now. Maybe if you are discouraged, part of the reason you are discouraged is that you have not embraced the role that God calls you to which may be a more difficult and less glamorous role than the hero you planned to be. Maybe, you are living God’s vision of your life and don’t know it. Instead, you are discouraged that you are not living your own vision. Yet, you cannot do God’s work in your vision. You can only do His work, in His vision and often times, His work is never really in the rock star category, although he can work through Rock Stars. That is because rock stars are famous for doing the glamorous stuff, but someone has to do the day to day task that may not change the world, but they manifest God in people’s lives; something that we are called to do everyday. Someone had to bring a secret mass and confession to the prisoners in Czizek’s GULAG cells.

• Someone has to be there to give a smile to Mrs. O’Leary who just lost her husband.
• Someone has to be there to tell your son and daughter that God loves them and calls them to love Him and others.

If it is not you, then who will? None of this we could ever do, if we achieved our own dreams and not God’s

When we pray in the Our Father, “May you will be done.” We are embracing His vision in our lives and committing ourselves to that over our own vision. This is something that James and John had to eventually accept. How about you?

Photocredits

All photos: Bigstockphoto.com

Top: one02

Top Middle: hospitalera

Bottom Middle: karelin-dmitriy

Bottom: songbird839