Mark 10:45. "For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

The "also" stands out to me here. Jesus did not precede these words with a litany of all aspects of His mission, rather He was telling the apostles that they are not to lord their power over others, that they are to be the slaves of all. (Mark 10:42-44). He is driving that point home by saying He Himself came to serve others, even to go as far as to give His life for us. So the "also" implies there are other things He came to do, besides serve and die for us. What are these other things? They are everything He did and said, and they were all in service of His one mission, to save us.

Jesus' main mission, which everything He does furthers, is to save us. Yesterday morning, on The Rosary in a Year Podcast (Introduction to Phase Three: "Meditating with the Mysteries'), Father Gregory Pine said that "the mysteries save us"; that "all of the deeds and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ save us ... From start to finish, [Jesus] is saving, He is about a campaign of salvation." (The Rosary in a Year Podcast (Introduction to Phase Three: "Meditating with the Mysteries'), Minutes 17:40 to 18:59). When we deeply understand this about Jesus, we come to know Him better, and better understand why He came and why He did everything He did.

Jesus did not have a checklist, nor did He come to give us one. He did not come to confuse us, nor to give us difficult things to do. Jesus did not come to give power to His favorite people, nor to only save a chosen few. He came to save all of us, full stop. At its very core, His mission was about love for humanity, and wanting to rescue each of us from a fate we often do not see or fully appreciate. If we come to know this about Him, and know and believe that He is God, so that He alone knows what is best for us, then we begin to want to do whatever He tells us to do. It is like being trapped in a building in imminent danger of collapse and wanting and needing to follow the directions of the builder in order to get out safely!

I think this is usually how following Jesus starts, with a realization that we cannot save ourselves, and a trusting reliance on Him to show us the way. But then, as we do the things that He taught us, as we follow His example, as we serve, as we love our enemies, as we strive to live by all of His words, we come to see that our lives are so much better! We become happier, freer, less anxious, less tied to earthly things. We become more Christ-like, more ready for Heaven!

Jesus' mission is to save us, everything He did and continues to do works towards that goal. Carrying out His mission included becoming incarnate, living a human life, feeling human pain, human love, and every human emotion, teaching, serving, and even dying for us. The "also" in this verse covers a whole lot, but everything it covers fits under the umbrella of His mission. He came to save us. There is no "also" to that. He wants us to listen to and follow all of His "also"s so that we can be saved.