Luke 14, 25-33:
Sunday, 4th September 2022 (23rd T O C)
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate their father or mother, their wife and children, their brothers and sisters, and even themselves, they cannot be my disciples. Whoever does not carry their cross and come after me cannot be my disciple”.
The Christian does not believe in a doctrine or ideas. He believes in a Person, in Jesus, the Son of God. And to be his disciple is something very demanding, as he tells us today in the Gospel. To be his disciple we have to give up many things, even good things, to make following him the first thing in our lives. He does not want half measures, nor a “light” following, but a demanding and radical one. We must take up our cross and follow him. On many occasions, both in family and social life, we find ourselves at the crossroads of contradictory options: to opt for the values of Jesus or for those presented to us by this world. Jesus asks us to put him before family, society or even our own life.
We meet people who try to build a Christianity to suit themselves. They make a sort of selection from the Gospel and keep what is least compromising for them. They set themselves a few “obligations”, not very costly, and with these they are satisfied. But the way of life that Jesus asks of us is demanding and radical, and we have to accept it in its entirety. It is not enough to stick to just a few things. The following of Jesus must involve the whole of our lives. We must ask ourselves whether, as the Gospel points out, we have done our calculations right, whether we have enough to build “our tower”; whether our foundations are sufficient to bear the weight of the daily cross.
Jesus had to give up even his own life, and for that he was glorified by the Father. If the way we follow him is easy and comfortable and not demanding and radical, then we have done our calculations wrong. We do not follow Jesus, we follow ourselves.
Juan Ramón Gómez Pascual, cmf
Are you a disciple of Jesus?
