Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Several years ago, when I was observing my Twentieth Anniversary of Ordination, a Priest from my hometown, indeed from my home parish, and even our same neighborhood, came for a visit. I reminded him that I was ten years old when I attended his First Mass, and during that sacred event, I wondered about the priesthood for my life, but felt unworthy of the vocation.

Even eighteen years later, when I celebrated my own First Mass, I told him, I still felt unworthy of the priesthood. Then I said that still, after twenty years of ministry, I continued to feel unworthy of this high calling. He responded, rather matter-of-factly: “Well, that’s good, because you’re not.” But he went on to explain that he would wonder about any young man who deemed himself worthy to be a Priest.

It was with this memory in mind that I approached today’s Gospel. The Lord truly drives His message home through repetition, reusing three words numerously:

+ “whoever”:      10 times
+ “worthiness”:   3 times
+ “to receive” :   8 times

The first five “whoevers” are spoken as a warning to would-be, but weak, disciples. However, the second five “whoevers” are spoken in encouragement. He mentions the word “worthy” in the negative, outlining examples of unworthiness in His followers. Contrary to this, the “receiving” of which He speaks is all in the positive, motivating His listeners to proper discipleship through Christian hospitality.

The clue to understanding the Lord’s meaning here lies in His notion of “worthiness.” How could anyone be considered “worthy” of Christ? I think that this “worthiness” can, in the end, be translated as something like “discipleship well-lived.” It begins with a commitment to Him, certainly a commitment that is human, imperfect, and perhaps even sinful, but which eventually moves beyond merely following Him, to begin to identify with him in our interior life.

The ultimate understanding of discipleship, then, would be this identification with the Lord as the basis for our self-knowledge. The Church recognizes and celebrates this movement, this growth, this self-discovery in Christ with the Sacrament of Confirmation, but what will this discipleship look like in daily living perhaps many years later?

In the mere five sentences of today’s Gospel, the Lord speaks of “worthiness” — or discipleship — in four areas of our life:

+ our relationships with the people we love
+ our willingness to suffer with Christ
+ the beginnings of self-abandonment into Him
+ openness to the Mission of the Church

Let’s look at these in a little depth to see how we can bring these forward in our own vocations.

The People We Love
What does the Lord mean when He says, “Whoever loves father or mother… son or daughter… more than me is not worthy of me”? Using the tool of hyperbole, or grand overstatement here, He is not speaking of abandoning our primary relationships: these are necessary for our well-being, and incur some duties and obligations.

He is speaking, instead, of inviting Christ to develop and transform these relationships, to strengthen them and purify them with Grace. There is not meant to be competition between love of Christ and love of family, but we should establish a balance between these two loves in a world that is essentially unbalanced because of our humanity and the demands that society makes of us.

Look at how this unfolded in the life of Christ:

+ The Finding in the Temple (your father and I…my Father’s House)
+ “Your Mother and your brothers”… who is my Mother…?
+ At the Foot of the Cross: “Behold your Son.”

Our Lord’s own growth into His ministry and His Messiahship entails a moving-forward into the unfolding of the Father’s Will in His life, while continuing to love His Mother in a growing, but changing manner. Our human relationships are important, but discipleship also has to retain its proper place in our lives.

Next we look at the Lord’s invitation to be Willing to Suffer with Christ

Here Our Lord challenges us with the words: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” We have to keep in mind that suffering for the sake of suffering has no meaning or value. But, uniting our suffering with the sufferings of Christ… sharing the Crosses that we bear with Him… allowing Him to transform these crosses into a share in His redemptive suffering… changes our outlook into our own experiences of suffering, be they great or small, bringing us eventually to a level of serenity that allows compassion for others, in their suffering, to develop and flourish.

We can now respond to others as disciples — that is— our meager love can be transformed into the love of Christ, and we begin to love others with the Heart of Christ, when our own hearts are not up to the task, offering us opportunities to serve Christ in others, especially those who can be difficult to love.

This leads us to the Lord’s third element in His calling: Self-Abandonment into Christ

Here, Our Lord teaches, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” In what at first sounds like a non-sequitur — finding one’s life by losing it — the Lord instructs us that finding our truest identity comes from setting aside our ego and seeking God’s knowledge of ourselves as a primary means of establishing our identity… no doubt, a life-long task, but one worth beginning today.

What can we hope for as an outcome of this search? Although we might never hear it with our ears, nor be it ever spoken by another, our hearts can become attuned to the Voice of God who will repeat those words first spoken of Christ at His Baptism: “Behold, my Son, my Beloved…” revealing to us the unimaginable love of God, whose Will is mercy, forgiveness, and union with Him.

So now,
+ having re-visited our relationships with those we love…
+ questioned our willingness to allow suffering to be transformed into compassion
+ begun a process of ego-dismissing self-abandonment… our preparation for  discipleship brings us to the Lord’s fourth element:

Openness to the Mission of the Church

Here is where the Lord speaks of “receiving.” To “receive” another has many meanings:
+ to recognize their existence
+ to affirm that they are beloved of God
+ to supersede the minimum requirements of Christian hospitality
+ to be open, sensitive and responsive to their real human needs
+ to recognize that serving others is not essentially a burden but an opportunity to serve Christ in the person standing before me at any given moment

Herein lies the beginnings of our role in the Mission of the Church: Becoming a Disciple of Christ involves:
+ an initial, elemental  choice…
+ ongoing development through real commitment…
+ an understanding of our weaknesses and limitations not as excuses, but as challenges to overcome by His Grace

...all of this, but also a perpetual willingness to share even a cup of cold water perhaps, in our early stages of discipleship development, hoping for the promised reward, and as we grow into it, beginning to realize that — worthy or not— to be a Disciple of Christ is its own reward.

Should we fail, or perhaps choose not to respond, living that unworthiness, as the Lord describes it, consider this thought from the 17th-century Saint Fidelis: “Woe to me if I should prove a half-hearted solider in the service of my thorn-crowned captain.”