23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Sep 3-4, 2016)

Labor Day weekend marks summer’s end.  Vacations are over.  The academic year begins again.  In the parish, faith formation resumes again and the parish ministries revive.  Depending on your perspective, it is the best of time; it is the worst of times.
As we pray over the Scriptures, in this season or in any season of the year, we know that Jesus is the face of God made visible and the one who challenges each day on the quality of our discipleship.  Much of the Lucan Gospel is set against the backdrop of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem where he was to suffer and die.  On their way, Jesus continued the formation of his disciples, telling them both the blessings and the struggles entailed in following Him.  As Jesus teaches, his message and words reach across the centuries and invites and challenges us in our discipleship of Jesus.
In our Gospel today, we hear that Jesus was thronged by large crowds swelling around him as he journeyed to Jerusalem.  If he was a politician that would be grand news indeed.  Indeed, politicians often will say or do anything to increase their ranks.  Not so with Jesus.

So when Jesus saw the crowds rushing toward him, coming along side to journey with Him to Jerusalem, he offered the words of our Gospel for today.  There are three jarring statements:  “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes even his own life, he cannot be my disciple...Anyone who does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple…Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
What?  Say that again!  Hate your family, carry a cross, and give up everything else in life—that is the cost of following Jesus.  Who would sign up to be a disciple?  For anyone just looking for an easy tour of the Holy Land, that was not the Messiah you would want to follow.  Jesus is not enlisting fair-weather fans.  Jesus wants to be very clear with his would-be disciples.

For a disciple of Jesus, discipleship demands single-minded loyalty.  Every disciple of Jesus must be prepared to endure suffering.

What does Jesus mean when he says we are to hate.  It would seem that Jesus did not get the memo from Pope Francis that we are in the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  In fact, what Jesus is confronting his disciples with is that we must choose Jesus and in so doing we need to reorder all other priorities which compromise our discipleship of Jesus.  We need to reorder even intimate relationships if they block us from making Christ first in our lives.  Discipleship of the Lord Jesus can never be a “Sunday only” commitment.
Today we celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa, St Teresa of Calcutta.  Indeed Mother Teresa had a single minded loyalty to Christ and her service to people most in need.  Indeed Mother Teresa was prepared to endure suffering for the sake of serving the poor.  May we embrace the spirituality of Mother Teresa who says “it’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” Another piece of her wisdom:  “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”  If you ever question the need for prayer before we engage in ministry, listen again to the words of Mother Teresa:  “Unless you can hear Jesus in the silence of your own heart, you will not be able to hear Him saying “I thirst” in the hearts of the poor.”

We as a Church are grateful for the ministry and the spirituality of Mother Teresa.  May we be inspired by her single--minded love of Christ.  Her vocation is not our vocation in the sense that we are not missionaries of charity in Calcutta.  However, our vocation to be a disciple of Jesus is the same discipleship as Mother Teresa’s.   Discipleship of Jesus takes many forms, and we are to interpret this Gospel in the light of the particular form of discipleship to which we have committed ourselves—marriage, parenting, friendship, career, religious life, lay ecclesial ministry, or priesthood.  We also think of other commitments we and others make:  to the social change of bringing reconciliation between ethnic groups or religions.

For us to respond to the jarring demands of discipleship expressed in today’s Gospel, our hearts need to be touched by the person of Jesus.  We need conversion experiences.  In the words of Mother Teresa, we need to hear Jesus in the silence of our own hearts.  We need to experience ourselves as God’s beloved sons and daughters.  We need to know the merciful love of Jesus in our lives.

What will it take for us to experience and know God’s love for us?  This is what motivates us to renounce anything that keeps us from our discipleship of Jesus.
Again in the words of Mother Teresa:  “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money you have made, how many things we have done, we will be judged by “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me.  I was homeless, and you took me in.

We cannot discover new oceans unless we dare to lose sight of the shore.  Lord God, to discover new oceans, we need to give up relationships that compromise our relationship with Christ; we need to embrace some suffering and take up our cross; we need to renounce possessions we have become attached to.

We pray for parents who have let go of their children as they have gone off to college; we pray for collegians as they begin a new chapter in their journey of discipleship; we pray for parishioners who have chosen to engage in ministry that pushes them out of their comfort zone; and we pray for parishioners who are coming to terms with the aging process; we pray for parishioners who are dealing with illness in their lives.

The truth is many of us are being challenged to “give up something.”  This may be a voluntary or just plain dealing with the reality of life.  May we discover Christ in this letting go process.  May this letting go be grace-filled and challenge us to trust in Christ more fully as we renounce, as take up a new cross, as we have to die to something that is difficult to let go of.  May we see with a spiritual sightedness that indeed like Christ we are on a journey to Jerusalem in which we need to continuously die to self and to make Christ more central to our lives.  Have a blessed day.