The last two Sundays laid out the cost of discipleship. The call of apostleship can come across as rather harsh and uncompromising; almost like an unfair one-sided contract whereby serfs or slaves are coerced by a capricious god who demands a pound of flesh. A cursory glance at the Gospel might suggest this—"Love me above everything. Or else”.
The 1st Reading provides a different view. An elderly and barren Shunammite woman showed hospitality to a man of God without thinking of what she could get out of the gesture. For her generosity, God rewarded her despite her age proving that He is not vengeful. He cannot be outdone by our generosity. The 2nd Reading is really invitation to be generous with God. Baptism, even though it feels like a simple rite of passage one undergoes without thinking, is really an invitation to totally surrender to God. According to St Paul, the Sacrament of Baptism symbolises a Christian’s entrance into and the embrace of the death of Jesus so that one can rise with Him in the Resurrection.
Generous discipleship is being single-minded in devotion to God. The language in the Gospel is unambiguous. When the Lord says, “Love me above all else”, it is not a truly a command but it flows from logic. To love God above everything is more a duty rather than a demand. Even though it sounds like He demands our love, but if we were to consider it dispassionately, we would soon realise that to love Him with our being comes from appreciating who we are and who He is. This is the only logic between a Creator and His creatures. We owe our Creator everything. He owes us nothing. Yet He chooses to share His life with us. Imagine a gangster “taikor” (mafia don) and his “macais” (henchmen). It is acceptable for a henchman to sacrifice himself for the mafia boss. Whereas we have a God who sacrificed Himself for sinners.
How not to love God in return? If we proceed along this trajectory of thinking, then generosity will become a way of life. The hospitality shown towards the Prophet as we heard in the 1st Reading or to anyone of the disciples listed in the Gospel is a gesture of generosity toward the Lord Himself. That a good deed will be rewarded is not the reason for its action. It has to be more than that. Of course, one can use this as a basis to preach a gospel of prosperity. The point that God cannot be outdone by our generosity is more a description of our journey toward interior freedom with regard to possession than it is a statement of God’s abundant providence.
Let us consider the family for example. The family unit is crucial to our sense of well-being. Some families might be broken due to tragic circumstances. So, if you have a good family, be thankful. If not, there will always be a hunger for it. Whatever the situation may be, it is natural to yearn for the intimacy of family life. In the Gospel, Jesus seems to pit the love of family against the love for Him as if both were mutually exclusive. They are not. One can love one’s family and one should always do so. Family gives us meaning and also provides stability for our worldview. But the truth remains that the family is not an absolute.
The idea of generosity towards God has to do with what holds absolute value in our lives. It should be God or Jesus Christ and nothing else. Not even the family and this is hard to hear and difficult to accept. When we have God as the sole desire and goal of life, it allows us the freedom to relativise everything else, even very important relationships of love that we hold so dearly.
Perhaps the Prayer for Generosity, mistakenly attributed to St Ignatius might help us understand what it means to be a disciple and an apostle. “Lord, teach me to be generous, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to look for any reward, save that of knowing that I do your holy will”.
Why?
We belong to God and to serve Him is the only freedom that is truly liberating. Apparently, St Ignatius who had just founded a new religious order in the 16th century whose aim was to serve the Church, had to overcome many obstacles. At the beginning, there were rumours that the newly-minted Society of Jesus was to be suppressed. He was asked what his reaction would to be to the suppression and He mentioned that he needed only 15 minutes to pray and then he would be on his way. This type of interior freedom is the fruit of one’s encounter with Jesus. In meeting the Lord, we ask for the grace to grow in the freedom of true apostleship—to freely offer who we are and what we have as we labour for His Kingdom, beginning here on earth and as the whole of creation moves in the direction of heaven.
There may be hardships ahead but caritas Christi urget nos [2 Cor 5:14], the love of Christ always nudges us towards excellence in both discipleship and apostleship. The reward will always be beyond what this world can ever promise. No Tesla, no electric vehicle, nothing can compare to the prize of giving our all to Christ. Suffering and not even losing one’s life can measure up to the reward of holding on to Christ and that is eternity, an everlasting life.
