September 4th 2022.  Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL   Luke 14:25-33
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL   Luke 14:25-33
Great crowds were travelling 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.”
THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

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HOMILY
1. If we are to live the life of Christ, then we need to break from our infantile way of surviving and learn to pursue the will of God.
The liturgy of the word this Sunday is very serious, very profound, very adult. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom speaks of the timidity and uncertainty of our human way of thinking. If we are to grasp heavenly things, then we need the Holy Spirit; we need to live a new kind of life. This re-orientation of our existence also applies to our human relationships. In the English version of Sunday’s Gospel from Luke, we have a very good literal translation of Jesus words: “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.” What is this paradoxical “Gospel hatred”? We tend to construct relationships that are based upon reciprocal dependency. Much of the baggage that was accumulated  by us in our more infantile stages of development is never resolved. There is an old statistic that the majority of marriages which collapse do so because of the influence of the spouses’ families. Following Christ, living an adult life, requires pursuing the holy will of God, which means breaking with infantile dependencies. Our parents gave us the previous gift of life, but supernatural life can only come from the redemption of Christ through our baptism. Without this, humanity remains incomplete, in an infantile state. As the third chapter of John states, unless one is born from above, one cannot see the Kingdom of God. This second birth demands a rupture, the same kind of rupture demanded of Abraham when he was asked to leave his paternal land, or the rupture experienced by St Francis when he returned even his clothes to his father. From now on it is the Father in heaven who becomes their true father. As the book of Genesis says, a husband and wife will abandon their paternal houses and become one flesh. The radical words of Sunday’s Gospel are absolutely necessary for a marriage to reach fulfilment. 

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2. We are called to live a redeemed freedom, no longer slaves to earthly forms of relationship, but a life rooted in the Fatherhood of God.
The Gospel passage also speaks of the building of a tower. This is the tower of discipleship. We begin to follow Christ, but are then divided between our infantile dependencies and the sacred will of God, the mature life in Christ, as St Paul puts it. With human good will alone, it is not possible to construct holiness. On the basis of our decisions, the only things we can build are purely human. Jesus came into this world to give us a life that is not of this earth. In the second reading, St Paul invites his listener to no longer treat the other as a slave, but as a brother in the Lord. When our existence is rooted in the Father, our relationships with others become fraternal, no longer based upon power or fear. Sadly, we have little experience of this redeemed manner of relating with others. Freedom from slavery to infantile attachments is actually quite rare. This is not simply to express a negative judgement but to remind everyone of the noble and high vocation that is hidden within us by virtue of our baptism. Our relationships fail because they are lived according to infantile impulses and not according to the new life of Christ, the redeemed liberty that only the Father can give us, and to which Christ calls all of his disciples this Sunday.

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ALTERNATIVE HOMILY
This week’s Gospel is the most radical in all of the Bible. If we are to be disciples of Christ, then we must “hate” our own lives. What can this shocking phrase mean? Is Jesus giving a list of things that must be done in order to be a disciple? Is he saying that if we do not make these renunciations, then we are not wanted as disciples? No, he is saying that attachments are overwhelming obstacles to following him. If we try to follow Jesus whilst remaining attached to these material things, then we are like the builder who begins to construct a tower without at first calculating what was required for its completion. The Christian life is not about ethical actions, or doing “good” things. It is about having the life of heaven in us! And how can we have the life of heaven in us if we love the mediocre and infantile things of this world? If I draw life from petty entertainment, empty pleasures, workplace rivalries, the superficial affections of others, possessions, etc., then I am not drawing life from Christ! The Greek language has different terms for “life”. There is the biological-psychological life I receive from my parents, and then there is the fullness of life that only God can give. If am to possess this second kind of life, then I must “hate” the first. It is very clear. The life I lead is either one sort or the other. That is why St Paul could say. “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). The first kind of life – biological life - is given to me as a gift without my consent. I did not choose to be born. But the second kind of life – the life of God - requires my consent. Today, you and I are being called to have this life flowing through our veins. God cannot impose this kind of life on me because it requires freedom to live it. We can have a church filled with decent people of good will, but they will not be true followers of Christ until they “lose” their own lives based on infantile things and abandon themselves in freedom to the life offered by Christ. How often our Christianity has failed and our evangelization has borne no fruit because we put our own projects, our own interests, our own affections, in first place instead of abandoning the governance of our lives into the hands of Jesus. It is not a question of being strong and competent, but of being weak, entrusting ourselves to the power of God.