The Cost and Conditions of True Discipleship, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), September 5, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Twenty-Third Sunday in OT, Year C
September 5, 2010
Wis 9:13-18; Philemon 9-10,12-17; Lk 14:25-33

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• It’s tempting for us to try to smooth over Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel as if he really didn’t mean them literally. But the reality is that Jesus did mean all of them and he gave us these challenging words precisely because he knew we needed them in order truly to be his disciples, live in true communion with him in this world, and come to the fulfillment of life with him in the next.
• He uses two images that set out why he gave us these words. Building a tower. Going into battle. I think a stronger image today would be a plane pilot’s setting out for Europe without enough gas to cross the Atlantic. Unless we’re prepared to confront these obstacles, we won’t make the journey of Christian life. He’s calling us to reflect on what means it’s going to take to achieve the end. Jesus tells us that if our end is truly to be his disciple, we’ve got to face three things we’re tempted to overlook:
  • “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.
    • We must love him more than we love ourselves and our loved ones. Jesus cannot just be a part of our life but the center.
    • Hate means not to detest but to put in second place.
    • What this means was illustrated to me clearly several years ago when I was a priest in Hyannis. I was preaching on St. Mark’s Gospel in which Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” I preached on this Gospel as tenderly as I could without watering it down. Nevertheless, after Mass a few couples came to me saying how “hurtful” what I had said was and how such words make it hard for them to come to Mass. I asked them what their personal situation was. In each case, they had been divorced and remarried outside-the-church without having even investigated whether their first marriage might have been null from the beginning. After helping them to see that I was merely echoing Jesus’ words and that the Church and I were not “making up” a teaching on divorce-and-remarriage, I asked them whether they love Jesus more than they love their new spouses. They paused. I asked them if they had to make a choice between Jesus and their new spouses, whom would they choose? They paused again. Then one of them asked why they couldn’t have “both.” I said that might be possible, if their first marriages were null, but until that time, they cannot have both and have to choose. If there is a choice between loving Jesus and following his teaching or loving a second civil spouse and rejecting Jesus’ teaching, if a person chooses the latter, then the second civil spouse is a Barabbas in that person’s life. Jesus calls us to love him to the point of “hating” all others if we’re worthy to be his disciple.
    • We could look at another example of a similar contrast in loves. Many people have come to me over the years and told me that they were planning to come to Mass but then family members came over to their house and they couldn’t leave them. I asked them if family members had come over when they needed to go to pick up their child from school, what would they have done, and they replied, obviously, “Well, I would have to pick up my child?” I’d flesh out from them that this was not just because the child was young and they had a duty to the child, but also that they loved their child more than their relatives. It needs to be just as concrete with the Lord.
  •  “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
    • In other words, we cannot be his disciple unless we’re prepared to suffer out of love for him and with others.
    • There are many Christians today, including some priests, 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 warm cuddly blanket and follow me.” Jesus talked, rather, about the CROSS.
    • We see this in a family that’s struggling to make ends meet, when one of the parents is told to look the other way at work when something illegal is done, or when they’re given an opportunity to make some quick money on the side by selling drugs. Unless they’re prepared to embrace God in suffering, the temptation can become strong.
    • Clearest example of all 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. They wouldn’t burn incense. They wouldn’t step on the Crucifix. They remained faithful under pressure because they were capable of embracing the Cross.
    • They 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.
  • “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
    • In other words, we cannot be his disciple if, like the Rich Young Man, we’re unwilling to give up our possessions in order to follow Jesus.
    • Jesus said that we would be as foolish as a man’s building a tower without sufficient supplies and funds, or a king’s going into a battle he cannot win, if we were to try to be his disciple without giving up all we own. 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” (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. Each of us, in some way, is faced with the choice of the Rich Young Man, the choice between Jesus and all our stuff; the Rich Young Man walked away from Jesus sad because he preferred his material possessions to Jesus; if we wish to follow Jesus joyfully, then we simply must prefer him to all we have. By his statement about giving up all our possessions, however, Jesus does not mean that we necessarily have to liquidate our bank accounts tomorrow. But what he is saying is that ALL of our possessions need to be given to God. All of them must be part of our service of God.
    • We see this very clearly in Mass attendance, particularly among the young. They say they “have to work,” and so they miss Mass on Sunday in order to earn money and what money can obtain. When given a choice between receiving the Lord in the Eucharist or receiving a pay check, they choose the latter, just like the Rich Young Man. On this Labor Day, I want to say that work is important, it’s part of our human vocation, but it cannot become more important than God, just like our family, our comfort or our life cannot come before God.
• These are all, what we might say, preconditions we need to remain faithful to the Lord as a disciple, we need to love him most, we need to be willing to suffer with him who suffered for us, we need to treat him as the greatest treasure, worth more than all the possessions or “kingdoms” of the world. If we’re right on these things, the odds are that we’ll be capable of remaining faithful in the midst of severe temptation.
• What we have to get out of our mind is that we can have a type of “bargain discipleship,” a “Christianity light,” in which we’re somehow able to have God and all our idols, too. Such a Christianity really doesn’t exist, although there are many preachers who try to preach it and many of the baptized who try to live it. It’s just not real. We need to be more than a “fan” or a “groupie” of Jesus. To believe in Jesus means to do what he says, not just when it’s easy to do or pleasing, but even and especially when it’s hard and challenging. Jesus brings these three things up because they’re among the typical compromises people of his era and every era try to make. I can be a good Christian putting other loves ahead of him, without the cross, and still seeking material goods. Jesus tells us that we cannot. To be Jesus’ disciple, to enter into his kingdom, is not a cake walk. It requires a DECISIVE CHOICE. One has got to be willing, as Jesus says elsewhere, to “pluck out one’s eyes,” “to cut off one’s hands” if that’s what it takes to follow him (Mt 5:29-30). We have got to be willing even to lose our life, because it is only the one who loses his life that will find it again in God (Mk 8:35)
• But I also want to bring up something else that’s crucial in what Jesus teaches us today. There’s an important verb. We’re called to “reflect” before we build a tower, before we go into battle. We’re a people of action. We roll up our sleeves and get down to work. In the spiritual life, we often start doing things from the time we’re young children, sometimes without reflection and we can end up wondering why we’re doing what we’re doing. But if we’re intending to try to build a tower to heaven, if we’re intending to be victorious in the battle against principalities and powers, we need to make sure we have the resources. We need to order the means we need to achieve the end of heaven. We need to pray about the type of life we must live and concretely get the resources that are required.
• Imagine a marathon. Story of Roland Shaughnessy. We need to train. We need to get the right sneakers. We need to eat well. We need to develop stamina. Similar with the spiritual life. We call it a plan of life, a series of practices we need to do in order to finish the race of life. Some are every day. Some are weekly. Some monthly. Some yearly. But they need to be done.
• In the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross to which I belong, there is a plan of life that I’ll share with you. It’s a plan of life lived by all the members of Opus Dei, the vast majority of whom are married lay people, so it works. Not everyone would necessarily need to do every one of these — some practices might be added, others might be subtracted — but I think these focus on the most important things for a plan of life. I give it to you as an idea:
  • Daily
    • Heroic moment
    • Morning offering
    • Prayer, half an hour in the morning, half in the evening.
    • Mass
    • Visit to the Blessed Sacrament
    • Reading of the Gospel
    • Specific prayers for particular things we’ll need
    • Angelus at noon
    • Memorare for the person most in need
    • Holy Rosary
    • Spiritual Reading
    • Examination of Conscience
    • Prayers before we go to bed for purity.
  • Weekly
    • Sacramental confession
  • Yearly
    • Retreat
  • Always
    • Presence of God
    • Consideration of our Divine Filiation
    • Aspirations
    • Study
    • Work
    • Order
    • Cheerfulness
• In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that to be a disciple we must put him first, live sacrificially out of love, and place everything we have at God’s service. This is the path toward heaven. This is the path to receiving the fullness of Jesus’ love. This is the path to real human happiness. 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 responded, “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 life insurance policy that that! There’s no greater guarantee or guarantor! Like a man building a tower or a king heading into battle, we must count the cost of discipleship — not just part of us, but all of us! — and with God’s help, pay the price, knowing that Christ is the pearl of great value, the treasure buried in the field, worth sacrificing all we are and have to obtain!

The readings for today’s Mass were: