least from this time, with young Samuel, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." (1 Kings iii. 10.)
III. When the vision had ceased, our Lord forbade His disciples to divulge it to any one. "Tell the vision to no man," He said, "till the Son of man be risen from the dead." (Matt. xvii. 5.) By this command He wishes to inculcate the necessity of humility, and to teach us that extraordinary favors of God ought to be kept secret and not divulged, unless some great necessity or spiritual good requires it, and even then, that we ought to acknowledge them to be the gratuitous gifts of heaven, and not merited by ourselves.
THURSDAY.
Petition of the Sons of Zebedee.— I.
I. "Then came to Him the mother of the sons of Zebedee." (Matt. xx. 20.) The mother presents herself to offer a petition for her sons, to obtain an honor to which they aspired, and they made use of her intercession as a cloak to their ambitious views. Thus mankind often attempt to gain some object of inclination or passion under false pretext, and often make use of the interposition of others to accomplish their own designs. Observe how this mother comes in an humble and suppliant manner and presents her petition in the act of adoring Christ. "Ambition," says St. Ambrose, "is first servile, in order that it may afterward domineer; it stoops to mean offices, in order that it may be afterward served with honor."
II. The petition of this misguided mother was: "Say that these, my two sons, may sit, the one on Thy right
