Gospel Lectio Divina for Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - September 4, 2022
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
Lk 14: 25-33
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
“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.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way,
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”
MEDITATE
If anyone comes to me without hating … even his own life
I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to myself “I hate my life”. We’ve all probably thought that at some point. In those moments, I’m not sure if I hated my life the same way Jesus is expecting me to, but it’s amazing how Jesus makes sense of even the most drastic desires for reckless abandonment. He even says to hate our own family, if we want to follow him. But immediately upon reading the word “hate”, many readers run into a problem. Jesus can’t be telling us to hate other people, can he? Hate ourselves, maybe. But other people, even our own family?
The problem here is not in Jesus’ use of the word “hate”, but rather our culture’s interpretation of the word. Today we take the word to mean “loathe” or “despise”, but that was not necessarily how the people of Jesus’ time would have interpreted it. They may have still interpreted hate as the opposite of love, but not in the same way we think of opposites. We often interpret love and hate in terms of emotion–loathing and despising are emotions. But in ancient societies where hierarchies were prominent the opposite of love would have been to love less than. So love is the opposite of hate in the same way that before is the opposite of after. We see this in Scripture. The apostle John often referred to himself as “the one whom Jesus loved”. This does not mean that Jesus did not love his other disciples, but he did love John more. John was part of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples with Peter and James. Jesus invited only John, Peter, and James to his Transfiguration. He entrusted his mother to him. So, in relation to John, it could be said that Jesus hated the other disciples because he loved them less than John.
Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, loved Jacob more than Esau and ensured that Jacob received Isaac’s blessing. It sounds harsh to say a mother loved one son more than the other, but Scripture proves it. Esau willingly gave up his birthright, and–as a discerning mother–Rebecca decided he is not worthy o Isaac’s blessing. She was putting God before her own son and chose Jacob because Jacob chose God. When we read something in Scripture, we have to give it the benefit of the doubt and put our own understandings aside. We have to trust Scripture as we trust Jesus because they both are the word of God. In Rebecca’s case, she had the future of God’s kingdom in mind. Jesus has the same thing on his mind. To follow Jesus and reach heaven, we must love God more than our family and ourselves.
We are so caught up in our society’s warped idea of equality that we think to love one person more than another person is bad. It’s not. In fact, it is good to love someone who is close to God more than someone who is not. Someone who is not close to God still needs love, but we will learn how to love them by drawing closer to the holy people in our lives. When we love someone who is stuck in sin more than the Christ-like people in our lives, we put our own souls at risk. But when we love God more than anyone else, he correctly orders all the other relationships in our lives.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
This instruction is interesting because Jesus had not yet carried his own cross. In that sense, it is a foreshadowing, but think of what his listeners may have been thinking. The cross was a common symbol of suffering and death. The one who was carrying a cross was going to be crucified. Not knowing that Jesus would be crucified, his followers may have considered Jesus’ instruction here to be quite a tall order. Dying to myself is understandable. I need to put aside my own desires and aspirations and pursue the will of God. But when Jesus asked them to carry their own cross, I can imagine many of them walking away, thinking that’s too much. In the Roman Empire, being executed for crimes was too real. Many people would have taken his words literally. If it wasn’t a cross, it may have been something else that would lead to their martyrdom. Jesus wouldn’t have said this if he didn’t mean it in a much more literal sense than we mean it today. Today, carrying my cross means enduring the daily struggles of life with grace. When Jesus said it though, it meant enduring great suffering as you are led to your execution. We have it much easier than the first Christians had it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still live an authentic Christian life.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion
Whenever I read this passage, it seems to me like some of Christ's words was left out. It could be hard to connect the dots here. What is the connection between carrying our cross and planning ahead? I have to admit, this took me some time to figure out. Jesus is advising us to look further ahead. In the tower analogy, he says to think ahead to the completion of the project. By saying we need to carry our crosses, he is advising us to think ahead to the completion of our lives. At that point, would we have stored up enough treasures in heaven to build our eternal dwelling? Jesus is advising us to have greater foresight, to look beyond this life, and make a decision about what to do based on what we see from that vantage point. We all have a vision of the afterlife. What are we going to do now to prepare for it?
Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.
Holding onto things has become our way of life. Storage unit facilities are being built more than ever before. We have savings accounts, trust accounts, broker accounts, and the list goes on. None of these things are wrong or bad or evil, but there is something better. We can give up all of these things and still be okay. Excessive concern for our possessions will make us lose sight of what is infinite and eternal. Ultimately, renunciation of the treasures of this world is at the heart of the Gospel. Earlier, Jesus used a short analogy of a king going into battle. Whenever a king (or these days, a general) went (or goes) into battle, he knows there is great risk involved. He has to calculate and mitigate the risk the best he can. History has proven though, that “fortune favors the bold”, and if you take no risk you receive no reward–and in fact taking no risk is the greatest risk of all. Okay, I’m done with my litany of cliches. My point is, that living the Gospel is the ultimate risk. It is the ultimate high-stakes game. It’s the boldest wager we can bet because we are putting all we have on the line for a reward we’ve never even really seen. In the end, we don’t even know if the reward will really come to us. But this is the condition for following Jesus. Are you all in?
PRAY
Dear Heavenly Father,
Your message is clear: unless we love you above all else we will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Oh, how I struggle to put you first. I cannot pray enough to ask for your help in this matter. Through your blessed angels and saints, please grant me the grace I need to pursue only what is true, good, and beautiful; and to stop running from you. You know my heart’s truest and deepest desires better than I do, so it makes the most sense to love you more than I love myself or anyone else. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
LISTEN
Christ hears our prayers. Am I willing to listen to his answers? They are often difficult to accept, like this Sunday’s Gospel reading, but the reward for obeying is always greater than the sacrifice we make.
Kilby is a freelance writer from New Jersey and managing editor of Catholic World Report.
