RSS Feed"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 own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple....anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple." (Lk 14:26-27, 33)
The bonds of family life and love are sacrosanct and are meant to be inviolable. Throughout His public life, Jesus spoke with insistence on the importance of family life: the sacredness and indissoluble nature of marriage (Mt 19:4-6); the beauty and blessing of children (Mt 19:13-14); the need to honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 19:19). And these are only a few examples. So how are we to understand this apparently contradictory teaching in the Gospel reading for this Sunday? First of all, no, Jesus is not asking us to honor our father and mother and despise them at the same time. If we look, however, at the Gospel passage which immediately precedes today's Gospel reading we can see the bigger picture. Before Jesus told the vast crowds who were following Him that they had to hate their families in order to be His disciples, Jesus told a parable of a man who had prepared a banquet and then received news that all of his guests had refused the invitation. Each guest had a different excuse for not accepting the invitation: one had just bought some land and had to go inspect it; another had to go check out some oxen he had just bought; and the last one had recently been married. Now, missing a party seems pretty harmless, and these seem to be legitimate excuses, but the parable was not about any old party, it was about those who were refusing the invitation to the Kingdom of God - Heaven - because they had other priorities. That is the context in which Jesus gave the above teaching. So what does all of this mean for us?
It means that if we wish to be a disciple of Christ we cannot allow anything or anyone to come before Him. This is not easy, but this is the simple truth which Jesus is underscoring for the vast crowds that are following behind Him. You have to be ready to make sacrifices, to "deny yourself and take up your cross," because that is the only path to blessedness and true happiness. Jesus is making it crystal clear that following Him is not something we can do half heartedly, in a disinterested or unreflective haze, nor just in our spare time, once we get around to it. We have to be prepared like the man building the tower, or the king preparing for war. Discipleship requires our attention and dedication on a day to day basis. Each day we have to say "yes" to Christ and be disposed to do His will as we discover it.
I have nothing but pure admiration for those who experience the cost of discipleship - both big and small. There are many people who understood the ridicule and hatred they would have to endure from family and friends for becoming Catholic, and still they chose Christ anyways. And there are countless people who suffer some form of persecution on a daily basis for standing up for their faith, or for striving to live and work according to the precepts of justice. And despite the personal difficulties or hatred they receive from others for living according to the Gospel, they continue to choose Christ over family, friends, coworkers, or society in general. These are the people who Christ can look to and say, "here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Mt 12:49-50) Aside from the persecutions and difficulties inherent in following Christ, this quote also reminds us of another fact - in the Church we are never alone - we are brothers, and sisters to each other. The bond of love in family life is sacred and good, but Jesus desires that we also belong to a bigger family, one in which the bonds of blood are purified and strengthened by His love - and this is the Church.
Before winding this reflection up, I would like to offer you a commentary from St. Bede on the last sentence of today's Gospel reading. I think the distinction he makes is an important one, as many hear Jesus' closing words in today's Gospel about renouncing all possessions (see the last line in the quote at the top of the post) and think, "how can I give up all of my material possessions and still maintain a family?" Here is what St. Bede had to say: "But there is a difference between renouncing all things and leaving all things. For it is the way of few perfect men to leave all things, that is, to cast behind them the cares of the world, but it is the part of all the faithful to renounce all things, that is, so to hold the things of the world as by them not to be held in the world." God bless you.
(Photo of Jesus' "Deposition" courtesy of Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P.)
