JUNE 26^TH2016. THIRTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL:  Luke 9:51-62

From a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

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GOSPEL: LUKE 9:51-62

When the days for Jesus' being taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him. 
On the way they entered a Samaritan village 
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. 
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
"Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?" 
Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.
As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him,
"I will follow you wherever you go." 
Jesus answered him,
"Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head."
And to another he said, "Follow me." 
But he replied, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." 
But he answered him, "Let the dead bury their dead. 
But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 
And another said, "I will follow you, Lord,
but first let me say farewell to my family at home." 
To him Jesus said, "No one who sets a hand to the plough
and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God."

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . This week’s Gospel challenges us to follow Christ in a radical way. How often we continue to follow ourselves and our earthly ambitions, and we turn to God only as a comfort or support for our worldly goals! Let us stop using Christ to bless or canonize that which is destined for the tomb! Jesus calls us to follow him and become children of God. This requires having our eyes fixed on our heavenly goal. We cannot be children of God if we continue clinging to our worldly hopes and desires. There are many attractive and fascinating things in this world, but the life of Christ is so much richer and more beautiful! If we follow the things of this world for their own sake, then we are following that which is destined for the tomb. Let us see in these things their transcendent and eternal dimension and they will become for us a gateway to heaven.

Following Christ involves a radical commitment to the things of heaven. It is not a way to get God’s help for our earthly ambitions and projects!

This week’s Gospel continues the theme of last week’s liturgy: what does following Jesus consist in? Is it a way to improve our lot in this life and help us attain what we want? No! Either we live as children of God or we don’t! Let us not seek to canonize that which is destined for the tomb! That which is destined for heaven is destined for heaven, and that which is destined for death is destined for death. Let us not seek to hedge our bets and live our lives in both camps. This point is made by Sunday’s Gospel and also by the first reading. Elijah throws his cloak over Elisha, which is a way of passing a charism onto another. The cloak was an inalienable possession of any Hebrew. If you loaned a cloak to someone else, it had to be returned by nightfall, because in a desert culture the cloak protected from the heat by day and from the cold by night. In response, Elisha makes a dramatic gesture. He destroys his instrument of work, kills his pair of oxen – his only earthly inheritance – boils the flesh and gives it to the people to eat. Then he turns and follows Elijah. These acts of breaking with the past, which are already present in the Old Testament, become a fundamental component of the following of Christ.

We must fix our eyes on our eternal goal, and not try to use God as a security or comfort to sustain our very earthly goals.

The Gospel begins with the refusal by the people of Samaria of Jesus. The Lord rejects his disciples’ call to bring fire from heaven down on the Samaritans, for he is more concerned with staying faithfully on his own course towards Jerusalem than becoming upset over those who reject him. For Jesus, his final destination is everything, and that is how it should be for us. How often we lose sight of our goal in life and we end up going around in circles! How often we become fixated with things that will soon come to an end. The Gospel recounts three ways in which we become preoccupied with things that are not essential. One person says to Jesus: “I will follow you wherever you go”. Jesus sees that this person has not understood that our ultimate destination is not a place on this earth. The Son of Man has no refuge here nor place to lay his head. How often we follow Jesus in the hope that he will help us prosper here on earth! We invoke him to ask him to help support and sustain our earthly projects. A Christian act, however, is not truly Christian if it does not have within it an eternal dimension, a dimension that regards the final things, an orientation beyond death to the Kingdom of Heaven.

We must take our eyes off earthly things and instead see the transcendent aspect of these things. They are our gateway to heaven if we keep our eyes focussed on their eternal significance.

A second person asks Jesus if he can go first and bury his father. Jesus gives the terrifying response, “Let the dead bury their dead. You go and proclaim the Kingdom of God!” The act of burying the dead is a true act of mercy, a Christian deed, but there is something else that comes first. Even in burying the dead, the focus must be on the fact that such burial is only a stage on the journey towards heaven. The third case underlines the same priority, Someone says, “I will follow you, but first let me say goodbye to those at home”. We cannot head towards the Kingdom of Heaven whilst looking backwards. When you put your hand to the plough, you cannot work properly if you are facing the wrong way. When we embark on a task, we must concentrate on that task. If Jesus calls us to life so that we can make it to heaven, then we cannot expect to stay clinging on to that which we were attached to previously. This life is beautiful and wonderful but it is only a prelude of what is to come. It is wonderful to be alive, but this is only the appetiser. It is great to be human, but so much greater to be Christian. To follow Christ is so much richer than to follow the things of this world with all their apparent beauty. To follow Christ is to see the invisible reality of things, to find in those things the gateway to heaven, to become the gateway to heaven for many others. To follow Christ is to discover in things the transcendent way to God.