Ambition

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 23, 2024

We all have ambitions. Even Jesus was ambitious in an unexpected way. He directs our ambition for greatness by recognizing human dignity and serving others in His love.

The Bible reports the kingly ambitions of King Saul, David, Solomon, and others. They fight wars to protect their kingdoms. As patriarchs with many wives, they build harem alliances with neighboring tribes. The prominent rulers of history usually achieve greatness following a simple recipe: They spend a lot of taxpayer money and kill a lot of people.

Herod the Great was a man of dreams. He achieved greatness by building his futuristic harbor on the Mediterranean and the magnificent Jerusalem Temple. He exterminated threats to his rule, like those pesky Holy Innocents during Christmas. “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl. 1:9) The menu of everlasting punishment in Dante’s Inferno gives Herod many choices.

Ambitions come in all sizes. Some in middle management pursue a haven of anonymity. They are hard-working, reliable, and have little desire for promotion. Pay is adequate for personal and family needs. They avoid promotion without sabotaging their careers. They do their best to hide in the weeds, do their jobs, and enjoy the annual customary pay increases. Without ambition for power and stature, they are ambitious for personal and family happiness. But do they use God’s gifts to become great? Or do they become great on their terms alone? Only God can judge.

Sloth disguises selfish ambitions and neglects God-given gifts for greatness. Some are happy with the rudimentary sustenance that their paychecks provide and do the bare minimum—if that—to keep the boss happy. In an amusing comedy scene, the Army identifies a normal but lazy soldier for duty. The soldier protests, “Look, our drill sergeant taught us, ‘Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.’ I always got out of the way!” The recipe is appealing (alas, even to priests). Dante reserves a terrace in purgatory for the selfish, the bored, and the slothful.

The Book of Revelation indelicately says, ‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will [vomit you forth from] my mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16)

Jesus is ambitious, but not for personal honors. His Passion and Cross are the proof. “The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” (Mt. 7:28-29) His mighty deeds and glorious Resurrection confirm the authority of His words. His most impassioned statement in the Gospel reveals His single-minded ambition. His truth is indivisible:

Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law…. (Lk. 12:51-55)

As his disciples jockey for position, Jesus redirects their ambitions. Along the way to Capernaum, the Apostles were discussing among themselves who was the greatest. Then Jesus sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mk. 9:35-37) Human dignity in Jesus is the basis of Christianity, and service in sacrificial love is its ambition.

God designed His gifts of ambition for greatness to honor human dignity. If we, like King Herod, cannot recognize the inherent dignity of a child, we cannot honor the inherent worth of others. It may seem excessive to some to discuss the prevalence of child sacrifice with the collusion of many Catholics, but a recent Pew survey provides a disturbing statistic. Six in 10 U.S. adult Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

At the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, Mother Teresa stood before President Clinton and his wife, along with 4,000 others in attendance, and called abortion “murder.” She said: “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”

Our Lady of Fatima paraphrased the Book of Revelation when she told those little children that, without our repentance, God would punish the world for its sins in our time with war, hunger, pestilence, and persecution. The ambitious abuse of power brings self-inflicted death and destruction.

St. Paul’s recipe for ambition and greatness is love: “Earnestly desire the higher gifts.” (1 Cor. 12:31) “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains [with advanced technologies and artificial intelligence], but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:1-3)

Specifically:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends… Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:8-13)

Love is ambitious. Love does not murder.