23rd. Sunday of Year (C)
(Wisdom
9:13-18; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33)
Christianity – as commonly confessed by many
so-called adherents – is, above all, a religion of love: for neighbour, and
even enemies; and yet in our Gospel reading today we have our Blessed Lord directly
addressing His past and present followers:
If any one comes to Me without
hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even
his own life he cannot be My disciple.
That apparent contradiction is surely the
sign and measure of our alienation from Him!
Christians of all sorts search around anxiously
these days for more people in Church, and, in that respect, regard themselves
as being motivated by the Christian spirit of evangelization. And yet, again, Our Blessed Lord was not,
apparently, over-pleased by the fact that ‘Great crowds were travelling with Him’, for we are told that:
He turned and addressed them: ‘Whoever
does not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
Why such a difference between Jesus and modern versions
of Christianity?
And there we have a partial answer to the question
above, ‘Why such a difference ...?’ which
I shall now try to develop.
Too many nominal Christians and pseudo-Catholics
these days want and pretend to walk with
Him before they have learned to walk behind Him, before they have sought to learn
His ways and preferences. They
begin by emphasizing their heart’s passing, urgent, affections to the detriment
of real and personal commitment; and they imagine they can love without adapting
to the one they ‘love’, without learning how to change themselves so that their
‘commitment’ and ‘love’ might be acceptable.
This attitude of presumed personal worthiness is widespread in modern western
society: whatever anyone does – provided it is within the law of the land – is fine,
if they want to do it that way; whoever, whatever, people think they are or want
to become is right for them, again so long as it is ‘politically correct’. No other responses to such personal positions
are acceptable in our modern society.
Of course, such an attitude is not the Catholic
and Christian ethos at all. Nevertheless,
some -- always too many -- prelates and leaders have been tempted and tainted
by such wide-spread ideas, and thus misled, they have begun to conjure up a modern
Jesus no longer necessarily based on the Gospel picture, a Jesus more adapted
to present popular attitudes and aspirations, desires and hopes. For that end they tend to evoke and promote--
contrary to Jesus’ Own express example in today’s Gospel reading and frequently
elsewhere -- disciples characterised by excitement and emotion, sometimes clap-happy
and, of course, infant-hugging, and they regard numbers as a sure sign and
measure of success. They delight most of
all in prominently-active members of the Church society, rather than in humble
disciples of Jesus who want above all to learn how to rightly obey and faithfully
follow Him wherever He -- by His Most Holy
Spirit given to His Church and bestowed on them by His Church -- might lead
them, along the way of self-sacrifice for personal love of Him.
Looking back again at the Gospel account, why did
our Lord use such an emotive and, dare I say it, ‘objectionable’ word as
‘hate’?
As you probably know, ‘hate’ in that context
means ‘put in second place’; and its objectionable connotations are useful because
Jesus wanted to strongly -- very strongly indeed – to emphasize the fact that
God must always come first; parents, family, even self, always second, never
before God. However, we should notice too that Jesus understood such ‘hatred’
to be a cross -- no secret joy or satisfaction -- for human nature; and part,
perhaps indeed the essential part, of that cross He immediately went on to
refer to when He added, ‘Whoever does not carry his cross and come
after Me cannot be My disciple.’
Jesus once said (Matthew 23:15) to some Pharisees:
You cross sea and land to make a
single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as
yourselves,
and that should be borne in mind by us today,
lest our modern zeal makes new converts twice as superficial in their
Catholicism, Christianity, and discipleship as too many of us have long been.
Our Blessed Lord summed up His thoughts in these
few words:
Anyone of you who does not renounce
all his possessions cannot be My disciple.
St. Bede gives us great help to rightly understand
these words, for he distinguishes clearly between those called to ‘leave
behind, relinquish’ all possessions, and those here called to ‘renounce’
such possessions: that is, those called to take great care that they do not
allow themselves to be possessed by their possessions.
Jesus’ words:
‘If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple’;
and ‘Whoever does not carry his
cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple’ seem to refer to
personal bonds of love on the one hand and to our instinctive rejection of
suffering on the other, and here Jesus’ words were soon to be backed up by His
own Personal example and experience whereby they have acquired a most touching
intensity of significance and depth of meaning for us. And as, in our Gospel reading, Jesus looked
round to see the crowd excitedly travelling with Him, He would appear to have foreseen
what lay ahead of Him and His words were penetrated through and through with that
total love and commitment which would lead Him most lovingly to leave His mother
a lonely widow in Israel, and take upon Himself the horrible pain and total
ignominy of the Cross:
If anyone comes to Me without hating
his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his
own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
The awareness of His Passion and Death was always
with Jesus, close to the surface, never to be ignored or disdained, because He
needed to prepare Himself for Satan’s final assault and thus to fulfil His Own longing to give the ultimate
expression to His love for His Father and for us when the opportunity
came. Therefore, the crowds light-heartedly
travelling along with Him this day stirred His pity and sorrow for their
incomprehension of what was truly involved, as would James and John later on stir
Him to a similar response:
‘Teacher, grant us to sit one at your
right hand and one at your left in your glory.’
Jesus answered them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptised with?’ (Mark 10: 35-38)
Scarce do we guess the things on
earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things
are in heaven who can search them out?
That is the only way modern excitement and presumption
of worthiness can become acceptable love for Jesus, if it learns about Him from
Mother Church and comes to believe that He is from God, come among men to share
God’s truth and bring God’s salvation for all those humble enough in heart and
mind to yield themselves to the guidance of His Most Holy Spirit with quiet and
patient confidence for the coming of His Kingdom.