In our summer-long tutorial on discipleship, Our Lord makes today His most radical statements — that is — He gets to the root of discipleship in two concepts that, at first hearing, sound quizzical.
In the first of these statements, 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.” As a teacher trained in the rabbinical method, the Lord sometimes uses hyperbole to get across an important point. It certainly sounds harsh, but we have to understand it in the context of the biblical language He is using.
In the language of the Old Testament, “loving” this person or thing, and “hating” another means simply to see the higher good in one thing or person… to prefer the good…to make a choice for the good… and to follow through with the choice as a mode of living. So, the Lord is not suggesting that we despise anyone, but is using hyperbole — a gross overstatement — to phrase His statement in a manner we wouldn’t forget. The Lord is saying that even amongst the good, committed relationships of our lives, if we don’t see Jesus Himself as the highest good, if we prefer our human relationships over Him, our discipleship will be adversely affected, and will perhaps even fail. He is not attempting to discourage us in human relationships, but wishes us to place them in context of discipleship.
Secondly, He says, “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” Another strong statement, now concerning preferring worldly goods over a relationship with Jesus, and the demands that discipleship will make. He is not encouraging irresponsibility here: we need to provide a home for our families, as well as food, clothing, education and transportation. Only a very few people will be called to make a vow of poverty, and these will be supported in this vow by a Religious Community.
What Jesus is saying here is that while we’re meant to enjoy the good things of the world, we’re not meant to spend so much time and energy garnering and enjoying those things that there’s no time or energy left for the spiritual life. Wealth and possessions are not evil, indeed they are a blessing. Therefore the Lord does not say “denounce” possessions, He says “renounce” them. This word is formed from the Latin roots re, meaning “again”, and nuncio, meaning to “announce” or “proclaim.” To renounce, then, means to restate the relative value of things so that we don’t prefer them to our relationship with Jesus, nor the exercise of our faith through discipleship.
Both of the Lord’s statements basically tell us: remember who you are, and remember, further whose you are and let these thoughts define your primary identity and how you will live in the world.
Now comes the hard part: living our faith in a changing world, a world that sees religion differently from how we see it, and a culture that is becoming hostile to religion in general, and to Catholicism in particular.
A new cultural religion has developed in America, separate from atheism, agnosticism, or mere apathy, that has the following set of beliefs:
+God exists, He created the world by way of the Big Bang.
+God wants people to be good, fair and nice.
+The central goal of religion is to be happy.
+God should be called upon when things go badly.
+ Everyone is going to heaven.
Certainly there are for more radical “religious” and “spiritual” ideologies out there, but we can at least begin with these as we look at evangelizing a post-Christian society. Speaking generally, Popular Religion has become moralistic, therapeutic and Deist. By this we can see it:
+Moralistic: at once hedonistic and puritanical. Anything goes in the realm of politics and human sexuality, until your political opponent gets caught with his pants down.
+Therapeutic: going to Church and believing in something at least vaguely religious should make me feel good about myself, or at least better about my personal predicaments.
+Deist: (a notion borrowed from the Enlightenment era of the 18th-century) God exists, but is essentially absent from His Creation, or at least too distant to be relevant.
Is there any hope for us as a Church in the midst of this populist notion of religion? Yes — Jesus Christ is our hope. He is the reason you are here today. We have experienced quite a lot in the past fifty years that has been detrimental to the continuance of our discipleship:
+the wondering bewilderment of people who want to believe in something, but can’t name it
+the bitterness of people who have left the Church
+the cultural animosity towards religion and attacks upon the Catholic Church, especially egregious coming from ex-Catholics
+the re-definition of marriage according to cultural falsehoods
+the sins and failures of some priests to honor their vows
+the hypocrisy of some Catholic politicians who profess abortion yet continue to receive Holy Communion
+the worry about the future of parishes merging or closing
All these thing will yield to hope, because Jesus Christ is with us in the midst of it, and has promised that the Gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.
Where then, do we begin? Well, it has to be right here, in this very moment. Jesus is here. He is with us, saving us in Word and Sacrament. In the proclamation and preaching of the Gospel, Jesus teaches us the divine way of loving. Responding to His Teaching, His mercy and His love, we must lose ourselves in relation to Him, even if just for the duration of this Holy Mass. We can open our hearts to a mystical moment with Him that can change the way we live our human relationships, and our attitude toward material goods, both for the better.
Then, in the miracle that takes place at this Altar at the moment of Consecration, the Father, the Son send the Holy Spirit, making Jesus present to us in the Holy Eucharist. It is our belief that the bread and wine are transformed into the Precious Body and Blood of Christ. It is our hope that in receiving Holy Communion, our hearts will become changed — now lived in union with the Sacred Heart of Christ. In Christ, God lives humanly, and Man lives divinely.
The grace of the Holy Eucharist gives us a share in the life and love of Christ, and therefore, makes us holy as we share in Christ’s holiness. We speak of holy things as well as holy people. Holy things are set aside for service to God, such as the chalice, the altar, the tabernacle. Holy people are also set aside for service to God: the heart of discipleship is love for Christ, and reflects the holiness of God in and to the world. God’s holiness can be understood as the life and love within the Holy Trinity; our holiness and discipleship participate in that love, making us truly holy.
This, then, is the heart of the New Evangelization called for by Saint John Paul the Great and Pope Benedict XVI:
+to come to know Jesus in Word and Sacrament
+to give our hearts to Him in love that is human, but grows toward love that is divine
+to say “No” to worldliness and “Yes” to holiness
+to take this genuine, growing holiness to the world: to our family, to the fallen-away, to those who have left the Church in hurt or in anger, to those who despise the Church and religion
+to speak of Jesus to a Church that seems to be losing hope,
and a world that is definitely losing Faith
+to love the world in Jesus’ name through the Spiritual & Corporal Works of Mercy
+to pray for more than peace in the world: to pray for the conversion of sinners
It’s a challenging task, this discipleship, but it is why the Lord speaks in such forceful imagery but in the end, reassures us by saying, “Remember that I am with you until the end of the world.”