What does Our Lord Jesus Christ mean
when he tells us in the Gospel taken from Luke chapter 14: If any man comes to me
without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and
his own life too, he cannot be my disciple? What does he mean when he tells us again: none
of you can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions? Our question arises especially as Christians,
His disciples, we know that He has not destroyed the tables of Moses containing
the Ten Commandments and He tells us too that He will not modify even an iota
of those given to all us through Moses and the Israelites. We know that the 4th Commandment
admonishes us to honor our mother and father.
We know too that the 7th forbids us to steal. And so therefore from these we know that we
must honor our parents and we have our possessions which will be
respected. Apparently from the above
statements from Jesus we are to let go of our loved ones and our own. Indeed as the First Reading says in Wisdom
chapter 9: What man indeed can know the intentions of God? Who can divine the
will of the Lord? and also: It is hard enough for us to work out what is
on earth, laborious to know what lies within our reach; who, then, can discover
what is in the heavens? As for your intention, who could have learnt it, had
you not granted Wisdom and sent your holy spirit from above? But as Psalm
89 prays: O Lord, you have been our refuge from one
generation to the next. We know O Lord that You are the
Way, the Truth and the Life; that you will not mislead us because you lead us
not into temptation; and that your message for us today is for our own good
from one generation to the next. And so
my dear sisters and brothers how are we then to interpret the passages from
Luke chapter 14?
We may be able to get a key with which
to open up the legitimate interpretation for the passages which interest us by
looking at the Second Reading, the Letter of Paul to Philemon, especially in
the context of chapter 1. Philemon had a
slave named Onesimus. He ran away from
him and he consequently faces dire punishment as a runaway slave. Onesimus happened to be associated with Paul,
the Apostle, and as Paul himself says Onesimus became a help while he
was in the chains. Paul finds out
about the story of Onesimus and he therefore encourages him to go back to his
master. With him he had a letter for Philemon,
as a safe passage for Onesimus and as a letter of recommendation so that
Philemon might have him back for ever, not a slave any more, something much
better than a slave, a dear brother.
Philemon might have lost a slave, might have lost a property, and that
only for a little while, but now he gains more than a slave, more than a
property, but a brother.
Going back to the passages which
interest us primarily from the Gospel of Luke chapter 14 and applying now to it
as a key of interpretation the Second Reading from the Letter of Paul to
Philemon chapter 1, we may come up with, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, the
following considerations. God at times
takes away from us material things, be it a car, a house, a piece of land, or
all our savings in the bank. He at times
takes away from us even persons we love, a mother, a father, a brother, a
sister, a dear friend. At the moment of
the loss and many days, or weeks or years after, depending upon each personal
experience, we wallow in loss and in suffering and cry for those who are no
longer. But then the Lord who has taken
away, now gives back in return someone more important to us, now gives back in
return something really essential to us.
He may at times give back to us more than what we lost. He surely gives to us a Person necessary to
us, His very self. By following Him, by
being His authentic disciples, we may lose our material possessions, but we
gain more out of it, certainly more than what we have lost. By following Him, we may lose our loved ones
but we gain infinitely more because we have in us Love Himself, Him who died on
the Cross for you and me.
We pray: Lord, take away from me all
that pull me far away from You. Take
away from me all that make me forget You.
Take away everything from me and let in me remain only You. Amen.
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