Chapter V.
Ambrose answers those who press the words of the Lord to
the mother of Zebedee’s children, by saying that they were spoken
out of kindness, because Christ was unwilling to cause her grief. Ample reason for such tenderness is brought forward. The Lord would rather leave the granting of that request to the Father, than declare it to be impossible. This answer of Christ’s, however, is not to His detriment, as is shown both by His very words, and also by comparing them with other passages.
54. “,” they say, “can the Son of God be the
only true God, like to the Father, when He Himself said to the sons of
Zebedee: ‘Ye shall drink indeed of My cup; but to sit on My
right hand or on My left, is not Mine to give to you, but to those for
whom it has been prepared of My Father’?” This, then, is, as you desire, your proof of divine inequality; though in it you ought rather to reverence the Lord’s kindness and to adore His grace; if, that is, you could but perceive the deep secrets of the virtue and wisdom of God.
55. For think of her who, with and for her sons, makes this request. It is a mother, who in her anxiety for the honour of her sons, though somewhat unrestrained in the measure of her desires, may for all that yet find pardon. It is a mother, old in years, devout in her zeal, deprived of consolation; who at that time, when she might have been helped and supported by the aid of her able bodied offspring, suffered her children to leave her, and preferred the reward her sons should receive in following
Christ to her own pleasure. For
they when called by the Lord, at the first word, as we read, left their
nets and their father and followed Him.
56. She then, somewhat yielding to the
devotion of a mother’s zeal, besought the Saviour, saying: “Grant that these my two sons may sit the one on Thy right hand, the other on Thy left in Thy kingdom.” Although it was an error, it was an error of a mother’s affections; for a mother’s heart knows no patience. Though eager for the object of her desires, yet her longing was pardonable, for she was not greedy for money, but for grace. Not shameless was her request, for she thought not of herself, but of her children. Contemplate the mother, reflect upon her.
57. But it is nothing wonderful if the feelings of
parents for their children seem nothing to you, who think the love of
the Almighty Father for His only-begotten Son a trifling matter. The Lord of heaven and earth was ashamed (to speak as accords with the assumption of our flesh and the virtues of the soul)—He was ashamed, I say, and, to use His own word, disturbed, to refuse a share even in His own seat to a mother making request for her sons. You maintain sometimes that the proper Son of the eternal God stands to give service, at other times you would have His co-session to be as that of an attendant, that is, not because there is a oneness of majesty, but because it is the order of the Father; and you deny to the Son of God, Who is true God, that which He plainly was unwilling to refuse to men.
58. For He thought of the mother’s love, who
solaced her old age with the thought of her sons’ reward, and, though harassed with a mother’s longings, endured the absence of those dearest pledges of her love.
59. Think also of the woman, that is, the weaker
sex, whom the Lord had not yet strengthened by His own Passion. Think, I say, of a descendant of Eve, the first woman, sinking under the inheritance of unrestrained passion, which had been passed on to all; one, too, whom the Lord had not yet redeemed with His own Blood, and from whom He had not yet washed out in His Blood the desire implanted in the hearts of all for unbounded honour even beyond what is right. Thus the woman offended owing to an inherited tendency to wrong.
60. And what wonder if a mother should
strive to win preference for her children (which is far better than if
she had done it for herself), when even the Apostles themselves, as we
read, strove amongst themselves, as to who should have the
preference?
61. The physician, therefore, ought not to wound a
mother who has been deprived of all, nor a suffering mind, with
shameful reproaches, lest when the request had been made and had been
proudly denied, she should grieve over the condemnation of her petition
as being unreasonable.