A joyful day for the Church as we celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa!
Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!
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Homily: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!
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Homily: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Today, the accountants out there ought
to be pretty happy, because in the Gospel Jesus is talking like an accountant. Let me explain. As boring as it may sound (sorry accountants),
it seems like Jesus is advising his would-be disciples to complete a “cost-benefit”
analysis before choosing to follow him.
In fact, it’s almost like he’s giving a seminar on discipleship to
prospective disciples in which he is trying to communicate what it will cost
them.
As we heard in the first words of the
Gospel reading, “great crowds were traveling with Jesus”. At one point he must have thought to himself,
“I don’t know if these folks are really want to be disciples or if they’re just
interested in the novelty of my teaching.
Perhaps I should get clear about what being my disciple will demand of
them.” Jesus came to make disciples and
not to sell out auditoriums and hock merchandise. Thus he turns to address the crowds and lays
out the conditions for being a disciple.
“I’m okay if you want to follow me around,” Jesus seems to say, “but if
you are going to call yourself ‘my disciple’, then there are conditions; and
here they are…” He then proceeds to
describe those conditions. Let’s take a
look at them.
First, he says “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.” This, of course, seems harsh at first because
for us “hate” is a strong word that means that we wish harm upon another
person. For Jesus’ hearers, though, this
word wouldn’t have had that same harsh meaning.
For them, to “hate” someone was simply to put them lower down on your “loyalty
list”. In other words, “to hate” someone
would mean “to turn away from” him or her when you have to make a choice between
that person and the one to whom all your loyalty belongs. With this understanding, we see how it is
still possible to love the person that you hate, because even though you have
to turn away from them, you can still will the good for them: that is, you can
still will that they would have every good thing that they need to find
happiness.
This “hatred” of others can cause conflict,
of course, if these others don’t understand your necessary loyalty to Jesus
above all things: conflict that could result in these loved ones turning away
from you. This is why Jesus wants to
make this clear, up front: If one is not ready to lose their relationship with
father, mother, husband, wife, children, brothers and sisters, then this one is
not ready to be his disciple.
Second (and I’m going to jump to the
third one in sequence), Jesus says that “anyone of you who does not renounce
all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Here, Jesus is demanding that we be entirely detached from our worldly
goods. In other words, he’s saying that
we must be ready to lose all of our worldly comforts and securities—our houses,
our cars, our food, our clothing… everything!—if we wish to be his disciples. Now, for some, this is a more difficult
demand than the first one. Perhaps they
are “loners” and are okay being isolated from others, but they rely heavily on
their worldly “securities” to insulate them.
To renounce these, then, too, would truly demand everything of them; and
so Jesus declares that this, too, is one of the costs of discipleship.
Finally, Jesus said “Whoever does not
carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Now, if we’ve been living the Christian life
for some time then we know that “carrying the cross” means “accepting suffering
patiently”. But I think that we have to
make sure that we are hearing that line in the way that Jesus’ hearers would
have heard it when he first said it. For
them, the cross was an awful instrument of torture and death. Thus, when he says “you must carry your own
cross”, what they hear is “You must willingly carry the instrument on which you
will be horrifically tortured and willingly carry it to your place of torture,
so that you can be tortured and killed on it”!
Notice that this is not a passive “accepting” of suffering, but rather
an active choice that must be made, day after day.
With this, Jesus really couldn’t be any
clearer about the cost of being his disciple.
Not only will it cost you your relationships and your possessions, but
it will cost you your very life. And so,
why would anyone want to be a disciple of Jesus? This is where Jesus’ accounting hat comes
back on. We’ve looked at the cost, but
to answer the question of “Why be a disciple of Jesus?” we need to look at the
benefits.
Jesus doesn’t detail the benefits in
this Gospel reading, but we know what they are: heaven, the fullness of life,
peace, everlasting bliss, etc. Think
about your dream life. Think about what
your life would look like if you didn’t have to work for anything and
everything existed in perfect harmony.
This is the benefit of being Jesus’ disciple: realizing perfect
contentment forever! If that offer was
put on the table, what would you be willing to give up? Most people I know would give up everything,
even their lives, if it meant that they could experience that dream life
forever.
The rub, however, is that we have to
take Jesus’ word that, if we remain a faithful disciple, this life of perfect
contentment will be ours. Nobody’s ever
come back from the dead to say “Yes, stick with it! Everything that he promised is true!” Rather, we just have Jesus, who himself
carried his cross, literally, on which he was horrifically tortured and on
which he died; but then who raised himself up again on the third day after his
death and who continues to live at the right hand of God the Father in
heaven. That’s all. My brothers and sisters, for me, this is
enough! Jesus has proven that he has
power over life and death and so if he asks me to give up my life so that I
might enjoy that life of perfect contentment (that is, perfect happiness…
perfect joy), then I’m going to give it!
And this is the example given to us of
all the saints down the ages, including the Church’s newest saint, Saint Teresa
of Calcutta (did you all know that she was canonized today?). Her work, and the work of the religious order
that she started, is a witness to the fact that, to be an authentic disciple of
Jesus, we have to be ready to abandon everything: even our very lives. Her canonization is an acknowledgement that
she has received the benefit for what it cost her. She trusted, even in her many years of
spiritual darkness, that the Risen Jesus would never abandon her; and now she
enjoys the life of perfect contentment that comes to those who remain faithful
to him.
And so, my brothers and sisters, our
scriptures today challenge us to ask ourselves these questions: “Is Jesus our
first loyalty or do we allow our desire for acceptance by others to compromise
our commitment to him?”, “Are we ready to give up everything for him, if he
asks it of us?”, and “Do we daily choose to take up the difficult thing that he
asks from us: to challenge a friend or family member, to respond to the needs of
the poor in our neighborhood and our community, or to speak out about an
injustice that is being ignored?”
Perhaps during this Labor Day weekend, when we honor those who work by
taking a day of rest from work, we can each take time to reflect on the answers
to these questions measuring the level of our commitment to being disciples of
Jesus. If the answer to any of these
questions is "no" or "well, kind of…" then let's not be afraid
of recommitting ourselves to making the answer to all of these questions
"yes"! My brothers and
sisters, Saint Teresa of Calcutta is just the latest proof that our
"yeses" come with the promise of everlasting reward!
If you are afraid that you won't be
strong enough, believe me, you don’t have to worry. Jesus is all the strength that we need; and we
receive that strength when we encounter him in the Sacred Scriptures that we read
and in the Sacrament that we receive from this altar. And so, as we turn to him now here in this
Mass, may the "Amen" that we proclaim at the “Great Amen” and just
before we receive him be the first "yeses" of our total recommitment
to him and of our confident hope in the everlasting life that he has promised
us.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 3rd & 4th,
2016
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