The Cost and Conditions of True Discipleship, 23rd Sunday (C), September 8, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Sylvester Parish, Medford, NY
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
September 8, 2019
Wis 9:13-18, Psalm 90, Philemon 9-10.12-17, Lk 14:25-33

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father that we “who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.” Today in the readings God wants to help us to seize that double-gift. He speaks to us of the true freedom that comes from being a son or daughter of God and then he shows us how to use that freedom in order to follow Jesus his Son, as faithful disciples, all the way to that everlasting inheritance. Just like a little kid on Christmas ripping open his presents, let us receive these gifts with joy and respond to God’s help to be totally renewed by them.

The full transformative power of our Christian faith is shown for us in the second reading today, from St. Paul’s letter to Philemon. During St. Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, he met a runaway slave named Onesimus and baptized him. Slaves under Roman law had no rights because they were considered property. They could be condemned to hard labor, punished with blows of the rod and otherwise tortured. Runaway slaves were to be branded with a red hot iron on the forehead with an F (fugitivus, or runaway) and even crucified. It also seems that Onesimus had stolen from Philemon, which is why Paul wrote that if he had wronged him in any way or owes him anything, Philemon should charge that to Paul’s own account.

But as strong as Roman culture, practice and law were, St. Paul told Philemon that Christian faith should be stronger. He was sending Onesimus back to Philemon and asked him to receive him not as a slave but as a brotherin the Lord, to welcome him as Philemon would welcome Paul himself. The reality of the indelible mark of baptism on Onesimus’ soul was to be far weightier, Paul suggested, than the branded F that could be placed on his forehead. And we have every reason to believe that that is exactly how Philemon welcomed Onesimus back; otherwise we almost certainly wouldn’t have had this personal letter of St. Paul preserved.

This points to the type of revolution the Christian faith is supposed to work in believers. Our faith in Christ, and what we know he asks of us, is supposed to be the central reference point for how we look at ourselves, look at others, and make our decisions. Philemon received God’s grace to welcome Onesimus no longer as a piece of property, no longer as someone who had stolen from him, but as a beloved spiritual sibling.

The Christian faith is, indeed, ever challenging to live, but, as we see in Philemon’s case, God gives us his help to meet those challenges. Christianity is not so much about what God demands of us but what he offers us to live up to those standards.\

That’s a fitting introduction to what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel about the type of commitment to our faith that he expects of us. Just as the Christian faith called for a revolution in Philemon’s thinking, decision-making, and relationships, so it’s supposed to transform our thinking, our decision-making, and relationships. Our faith in Jesus is supposed to revolutionize the way we relate to our family, our property, our pleasures, even our own life. To be a faithful disciple, he says, is going to cost us and cost us dearly. It’s tempting to try to soften Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, as if he really didn’t or couldn’t mean them literally, because they are so challenging. It’s tempting to try to reduce the price tag of the faith, as if Jesus were running a Yard Sale and we could haggle the cost down to something we think a bargain. But Jesus meant what he said and in talking to us forthrightly about what it takes to be a faithful disciple, he wasn’t just giving us towering criteria but promising us his help to fulfill them.

Jesus uses two images that set out why he needed to be so straightforward with us. In the images of building a tower and going into battle, he communicates that we need to know what it’s going to take to succeed in the spiritual life, to be a faithful disciple until death and into eternity, so that we don’t start something without having the spiritual resources and resolve to finish what we’ve started. If a pilot is setting out for Europe, he has to have enough gas to cross the Atlantic. Unless we have a clear idea of the costs of discipleship and are prepared to pay them, Jesus implies, we’re not going to be able to complete the journey of the Christian life. Jesus is calling us to reflect on what means it’s going to take to achieve the end and to will those means.

If our end is truly to be Jesus’ disciple, we’ve got to face three things we’re often tempted to overlook or minimize.

The first condition is: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” In other words, Jesus must be our greatest love. The word “hate,” in Hebrew, does not mean “detest” but to “put in second place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our parents and love them, not despise them or anyone else. If he calls us to love even our enemies, then we are certainly called to love our progenitors and siblings! The point of Jesus’ expression is that we must love him more than we love ourselves or our loved ones. Jesus cannot just be a partof our life but the center. The question for us is: When push comes to shove, who is more important to us, God or our husband, or wife, or parents, or kids, or siblings? The reason why this is a necessary cost is because so many temptations against faith can come from within the family. While our family ought to be our greatest support, sometimes they become our greatest opposition. When I was in seminary in Rome, it used to break my heart how many of my fellow future priests came from homes in which their parents opposed, rather than supported their vocations. I see the same thing in some of the the families of Sisters of Life for whom I celebrate Mass throughout the week in Manhattan. But I see it in more routine ways. One of the shocks early in my priesthood was how many faithful Sunday Mass goers actually missed Mass on Christmas. When I spoke to them and asked how it was that they who are ordinarily so faithful could miss such an important feast, many divulged that it was because they had family coming over and they needed to prepare food and get the house ready. Hospitality is a really important thing, but we can’t love family more than we love God. There is clearly a cost to loving Jesus more than all our family members, but Jesus wants to give us his help to do so. And when we love Jesus most, we love our family members more, not less.

The second condition Jesus describes is, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Jesus tells us that we cannot be his disciple unless we’re prepared to suffer out of love for him and others. There are many Christians today who seem to behave as if the life of a disciple is supposed to be easy, as if Jesus said, “Pick up your pillow, take up your teddy bear and cuddly blanket and follow me.” Jesus talked, rather, about the Cross. He stresses that unless we’re prepared to suffer for our faith, we will not be able to finish faithfully the journey of the Christian life.  The clearest example of this is the martyrs, who were prepared to die rather than to sin, who were prepared to embrace the Cross all the way because they knew that the Cross would unite them to Christ. In the ferocious anti-Christian persecutions of the Roman empire, Christians were given the chance to save their lives before a magistrate if all they did was take a pinch of incense and put it on burning charcoals before statues of the pagan gods. They refused. They remained faithful under pressure because they were capable of embracing the Cross. The loved the Lord even more than they loved their life. Unless we’re intent on embracing the Cross, eventually we’ll reach our breaking point and be unfaithful to Jesus.  Unless we’re prepared to pay the full cost of fidelity, someone will eventually find our price. It might not be 30 pieces of silver, but others will eventually find it. The whole purpose of a Catholic parish, the whole ministry of parish priests, is to prepare you ultimately to remain faithful to Jesus even if you were to have to die. You probably know that in the early Church, catechumens were not able to be baptized until they were resolved to remain faithful even during persecution and the threat of torture and death. Jesus, likewise, wants us to be aware of the cost of discipleship, that we have to be willing to carry the Cross, to die to ourselves, in order to follow him faithfully. But he likewise is willing to give us all the help he knows we need to do so.

The third condition is,  “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” We cannot help but think of the Rich Young Man, who when presented by Jesus with the path to true fulfillment through giving up what he owned, bestowing the money on the poor and storing up treasure in heaven and then coming after him, chose his stuff rather than Jesus. Jesus says that we cannot be his disciple unless we’re prepared to choose differently from the Rich Young Man, to detach ourselves from our possessions to attach ourselves to the treasure of Jesus. Unless we’re prepared to do this, we would be as foolish, Jesus said, as a man’s building a tower without sufficient supplies and funds, or a king’s going into a battle he cannot win. Jesus didn’t say it would be “hard” to be his disciple if we continued to grasp on to our material possessions, but impossible. It can’t be done. This seems to be a shockingly challenging condition, but Jesus was driving at something he had said elsewhere in the Gospel.  “No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other,” he told us during the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6:24). He then gave that sentence a clear practical application: “You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt 6:24). Unless we give up our love of money, unless we make the choice not to serve money, then we cannot be his faithful follower. Jesus does not mean that we necessarily have to liquidate our bank accounts tomorrow. But what he is saying is that allof our possessions need to be given to God, to be put at the service of his kingdom. All we have and are must be part of our service of God, our unselfish love of him and others. Jesus who calls us to love him above all our things is prepared to give us all the help he knows we need to be poor in spirit, but we have to receive that gift and act in accordance with it. The price of discipleship is, in some sense, the actual value of all we own.

Today, Jesus reminds us that is always a great cost to our discipleship, but the rewards are even greater. Jesus promised us as much in the Gospel after Peter asked him, “Lord, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, … everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life” (Mt 19:29). There’s no greater promise than that! There’s no greater guarantor! God wants to transform us just as much as through St. Paul he transformed Philemon. Like a man building a tower or a king heading into battle, we must count the cost of discipleship and with God’s help, pay the price, knowing that in return we will receive Christ, who is the pearl of great value and the treasure buried in the field, worth sacrificing all we are and have to obtain!

The readings for today’s Mass were: