Envy is a Waste of Time!

“Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice.” But “if anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”

Quo vadis? Where are you going? When Peter arrived in Rome, he was busy preaching the Gospel and establishing the Christian community there. Eventually, he caught wind that Nero was about to start a mass persecution, but he recognized that he still has some work to do, more evangelizing that can be done. So, he walked out of Rome to head to the next place. Good for Pope Peter!

But as he leaves the city gates, he sees a man walking towards the city. And the man is carrying a cross. And as they get closer, Peter recognizes the man: it’s Jesus. So the Pope asks the Lord: “Quo vadis? Where are you going?” And the Lord says, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.”

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus prophecies about his death 3 times. We heard the first prediction last week, after Peter’s confession that he is the Christ. Today, we get the second prediction one chapter later. And the context surrounding this one is just sad and disappointing. It’s sad because he just got finished making this prediction, explaining how the Son of Man is to be betrayed and killed, and immediately they started arguing about who was the greatest.

I mean, it was so bad, St. Mark says that they walked all the way to Capernaum and into the house before Jesus asked what they were arguing about. They were coming from Mt. Tabor, which is a 9 hour walk to Capernaum. So, Jesus gives this prediction, the disciples fight with each other, Jesus ignores this argument for 9 hours, and it’s when they get inside Peter’s house that he finally asks them, “So, what was that all about?” You can see why the disciples remained silent. They knew they completelymissed the point. And they got busted.

I like to think that St. James was so affected by this episode, he felt so bad, and because of that, we get this line from our second reading today: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” He learned an important lesson that day: There’s nothing more divisive in this world than envy, and that any kind of striving for prestige and ambition achieves nothing. Nothing. That day, he learned what a waste of time it is to worry about something like honor and glory. 9 hours he wasted with the disciples, arguing about who was the best, when his friend was right there talking about how he was going to suffer and die.

The word envy comes from the Latin word “invidia,” which literally means, “to look closely” at something. The sin of envy is when we look at a person’s goods—whether they be material goods or spiritual goods—and not only do we have a sadness about it, but we experience a desire to have those goods for ourselves. And it’s particularly grave when that envy stirs in us a desire to cause harm to that person.

The story of Snow White is a great example. The evil queen becomes jealous that Snow White is outwardly more beautiful than her. Poor Snow White lives in a forest for crying out loud, cooking and cleaning for a bunch of crazy men, crazy dwarves. The evil queen is evil because here she could have helped Snow White and the dwarves out of this condition, but instead, wasted her time on something as trivial as outward beauty.

We have our own version of the Mirror on the Wall today: our cell phones. Social media. We’re constantly | reminded | all | the | time | of other people’s fortunes, of other people’s beauty, of other people’s supposed happiness. And in our own envy, with that deflated ego, we constantly try to one-up everyone, either by exaggerating our own successes or by putting others down to make us look better. We waste time posting picture after update after picture, trying to lie to people about how happy we are.

We’re no better than the disciples in that way. Week after week, we enter in church, look at the image of Christ crucified, listen to Christ in the readings talk about how he’s supposed to suffer, and we consume the Eucharistic Christ. Meanwhile, we go outside, we go out there, and what do we do? We consume the Eucharistic Christ only to devour one another. We pray together, we become the Body of Christ here, only to go out there and make that same Body of Christ a corpse.

Do you know which deadly sin the Catechism calls the diabolical sin? The sin of the devil? Many people would say it’s pride. But the Catechism, quoting St. Augustine, says thediabolical sin is envy. The Book of Wisdom confirms this: “Through the envy of the devil, death entered the world.” And that’s what the devil wants: he wants us to out there beating each other up, killing the Body of Christ. What’s the solution, then? What can be done?

“Quo vadis? Where are you going?”

“I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” At that, Peter had to decide. It’d be great to evangelize more towns. Paul’s evangelized so many, James had made it all the way to Spain, Thomas all the way to India. Peter could keep going, to prove that he was the greatest Apostle. But he decided to follow his Lord back to Rome. And there, he’d be arrested, tried, and executed by crucifixion.

Many of you may have heard that he asked to be crucified upside down because he felt he was unworthy of being killed the same way Christ was. But another tradition, handed down in the extra-biblical work The Acts of Peter, states that St. Peter chose to be crucified upside down so that he could see the world as it really is. As he hung there upside down, he remembered the words of his Lord: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last and the servant of all.”

Brothers and sisters, what we do here every Sunday is not an add-on; it’s not an extra just for “religious folk.” We’re called to see the world as it really is. It’s not the queens or the emperors of this world who are really on top. It’s the Snow Whites and the Peters who are on top. It is Christ who has conquered the world, and all who follow him share in that victory.

This week, how we can move our vision away from the stuff people have to notice the crosses they’re carrying? Can we die a little to ourselves and set aside our envy? Can we instead pray to God and thank Him for the gifts He’s given to others? Can we thank Him for the gifts and even the crosses He’s given us?

There’s no reason to waste time fighting one another. God has already given us everything we could ever desire! He gave us a mission, a purpose in life: to follow Christ to the Cross and to bring others on that journey. And He’s also about to give us Himself in the Most Holy Eucharist; He’s about to give us eternal life. Rather than wasting time harboring that envy, let’s spend this time thanking God for such a great gift!