You may have heard this assessment that Catholics are sacramentalised but not evangelised. It is not a complimentary evaluation as it implies that Catholics do not know the bible, let alone mission-minded. This negative appraisal may hint of a Protestant insinuation of what Catholics are. Today’s 1st Reading and a section of the Gospel passage may prove otherwise. Catholics may not “know” the Bible the way Protestants do but they definitely breathe it. For example, both these readings share a connexion with the way Catholics welcome their priests. Never mind that some priests feel entitled and many of us do not live up to what is required of us. We failed as evidence in the recent many scandals. However, this does not obscure the fact that many Catholics welcome their priests and where do they get his from? In the 1st Reading, we hear the Shunamite woman who was promised a reward for the welcome given and hospitality afforded to the man of God, Elisha which prefigured the recompense pledged in the Gospel by Jesus Himself that those who honour a prophet will have a holy man’s reward.
This welcome that Jesus speaks about is indeed comforting and assuring for those who follow Him. However, it is preluded by some hard saying of Jesus. They deal with our heart and our priorities. This side of the Gospel is not always something which we enjoy hearing considering that our version of Christianity is easy and light. Today we hear it loud and clear.
It would appear that Jesus repudiates the commandment—to honour one’s father and mother. But that was not His intent. In the matter of choosing between good and evil, there is no choice per se because we necessarily choose the good. There is no question of choosing the bad. The difficulty arises when we have to choose between two goods. It is good to love one’s parents or to love life itself for God did not create life for us to disdain it. It would make no sense at all. However, it is also a good to love God. Hence the decision is between the good of loving one’s neighbour (parents etc) and loving God. It feels like we are caught in a paradox because Jesus Himself taught us to love our neighbour as ourselves. How can He pit these two goods, that is, the love of God vs the love of neighbour?
To understand we enter into the realm of hierarchy or priorities. We ought to love our neighbour or love our life because they are God’s gifts to us. However, our love of these must flow from our love of God. Hence, we do not love them for themselves alone. Between two loves which are good, we ought to love the better. The love of God is always the better option.
A quotation might help illustrate today’s lesson. The wise man values the love of the giver rather than the gift of the lover. Indeed, the Lord has given us so bountiful a creation. Hence we ought to love it. But, we should never forget the God who gives us. A man who loves his life, his spouse, his family, his money, his possessions more than God has forgotten the Blesser because he is engrossed with his blessings.
Today we are taught to love our families because relationships are important to us etc. But, one should marvel as how radical the missionaries were in the days of old. Scores of our older religious—like the Irish missionaries or the French Fathers when they left their homeland, they said goodbye forever. The hand that is laid to the plough does not look back. Many of them came and as far as they were concerned, it was as if their families were dead to them.
Perhaps it is an indication that times have changed. We think we have a slightly better understanding of psychology or are we just too “psychologised” (if there is such a word) that we rationalise away anything which smacks or suggests of radicality? It is a kind of watering down the demands made of us in the name of “wholeness” or more integrated psychology etc. We have become soft. We are easily offended. We readily embrace victimhood because we have been done to. We are definitely entitled as we ought to love ourselves, be kind to ourselves. What we think is the most important point of view, etc. Hence, the kind of radicality of the past missionary would appear alien to our soft psychology.
The Gospel is indicating that the radicalness of discipleship is divisive in itself. This is most likely the crux of Jesus’ hard message. It is a truth we may not have fully calculated. It is like swiping with a credit card. You spend but do realise the full cost of your expense. For those who are converting, the landscape is different. Here, we can speak of say a religion that is all pervasive that it permeates everything so much so that a person of that religion cannot risk a conversion out of that religion. He or she will be killed by the relatives. They call it honour killing. The Gospel discipleship speaks to these people and more.
In following Jesus, when we encounter the options between good and bad, it is a no-brainer kind of option. We need not even think of it. Stealing is one of them. Or killing. We do not stop to think about abortion as an option. We do not do it. Full stop. But there will be plenty of other options in which the choice is between what is good and what is better. Like for example, the love of one’s family and the leaving of the family in order to serve the Lord better.
More radical than that is to live according to the standards of Christ. We are dealing with a culture of complacency that makes discipleship tough. What do I mean by complacency—we accept the cost of doing business in this country that we no longer think of it in terms of following Jesus. The added cost are the brown envelopes. Everyone does it. If you were to do business without it because it is part of your discipleship, you will find yourself alone or left behind. People will think you are stupid and your family might even reject you. To stand alone is not a nice feeling. Radical discipleship of Christ will lead to loneliness.
The 2nd Reading highlights the loneliness this way: You too must consider yourself dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus. Dying to sin is a long and lonely process of conversion whereas living for Jesus is the solitary pilgrimage that one has to undertake in order to be His disciple. To love Christ and to follow Him is an everyday decision. For many of us, our parents made that initial decision for us. It is up to us to personally take up the challenge of discipleship. Otherwise as Dietrich Bonhoeffer used to say, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
What Bonhoeffer describes is no more than what is human. Even Jesus Himself begged the Father to remove the bitter cup of suffering as He agonised in Gethsemane. It shows us that no one is born a martyr or let alone a saint. What a saint or a martyr is, what they are is a lifetime of choices beginning with small sacrifices building up to the lived discipleship which becomes a person’s second nature. When we read or hear of a martyr stepping up to the stage of sacrifice is but a culmination of a heart that had already been following Christ. Hence, we have hope. Each one of us begins with small steps and in time we will become the disciple that Christ can proudly say to us: You have walked my Calvary, now enjoy the Kingdom that is destined to be yours for eternity.
