Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 28, 2020
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a
Psalm 89:2-3, 16-19
Romans 6:3-4, 8-11
Matthew 10:37-42
When I was in college, we had the option of attending Sunday Mass outside of the seminary. Twice a month, three or four of my friends and I would go to a local parish for Sunday Mass and then stop for a late breakfast. There were two priests assigned to the parish, the old priest, and the young priest. We would talk about the homily at breakfast and consider and, I must confess, at times criticize the substance and styles of their homilies. One of my friends summed it up perfectly, the young priest preached about what Jesus said and the old priest preached about what Jesus meant.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Jesus said it, but did He mean it? His words are shocking to our ears.
The family
is the foundation of society. The family, rooted in marital love of husband and
wife, is essential for the flourishing and development of a human being. This
is a point of nature, so why does Jesus speak of not loving father or mother
more than Him, or of not loving son or daughter more than Him for the sake of
being worthy of Him? He is telling us this because He means that which we
naturally think is the most important part of life, is not as important as the
Cross, which is the only way for us to get where He desires us to go.
To love Christ more than father or mother,
more than son or daughter, means that we are made for something greater and
grander than even the best that this world can offer. We cannot get there on
our own because we are created to be united with perfect love, but the reality
of sin has made us imperfect. Our only hope is to be transformed by Christ that
the Father might look at us and see and love in us what He sees and loves in
Christ.
Jesus says
and means that the responsibility of Christian mothers and fathers is not
simply to provide and educate their children to be successful in society but
that their responsibility is to teach and set an example for their children to
have their eyes fixed on heaven as their ultimate end. This might mean that
their children might not be successful on the fleeting terms that the world
sets as the metric for success.
Because of
the grace of our Baptism, we are destined for something grander
and greater than the best that this world can offer. We need Christ to
accomplish this for us. The summons of the Gospel calls us to a greater
maturity of discipleship — one that requires fathers and mothers to set an
example of moral rightness, integrated discipleship, and involvement with their
children that challenges them to conversion and corrects them from time to
time.
The mission of the Church is such that
objective aspects of the Gospel like the indissolubility of marriage between
one man and one woman, the immorality and sinfulness of cohabitation, the
destructive character of contraception, dishonesty at school or at work, the
obligation to keep holy the Lord’s Day, the sanctity of human life in the womb,
and the inherently objective immorality of homosexual acts are things that
cannot be ignored for the sake of false
appeasement and pacification of people who should rightly be made uncomfortable
by sin so that recourse to God’s grace might be sought. Otherwise, in the words
of today’s Gospel, the family will find its life in this world and lose it
instead of losing its life for the sake of Christ and finding it. Family life
needs an orientation beyond itself and the limits of this world. God’s grace
provides that capacity and direction as spoken and meant by Jesus in the Gospel
today.
The ordinary way that Christ sets this
eternal trajectory in family life is through the shared participation at Mass. This
supernatural character of the Mass is the reason that the worship and sacrifice
entailed with the celebration of Mass are essential and necessary for our
salvation. When we do not worship as Christ intends us to worship, we are
harmed objectively and so are our families and society. Jesus both said and
meant that.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says and means, “Whoever loves father or mother more than
me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not
worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life
for my sake will find it.” To worship as Christ intends us to worship requires
the priesthood that has been instituted by Christ for the sake of the
Eucharist. In order for us to offer the sacrifice of the Mass in a fitting way
that raises our minds to eternity, a priest is called in a particular way to
lose his life for the sake of Christ and Christ promises that in so doing the
priest will find his life. It is with confidence in these words that Christ
both spoke and meant that fathers and mothers should never discourage a
priestly or religious vocation for their son or a religious vocation for their
daughter despite the lack of promise of success as understood according to the
limits of this world. Tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton
parish in Keller, I will ordain Father Pedro Martinez to the priesthood for the
Diocese of Fort Worth. Please pray for him and join us by livestreaming on our
diocesan website, fwdioc.org.
A major witness of the priest losing his
life for the sake of Christ is the promise and humble practice of a chaste
celibacy. The reason a priest promises a life of celibacy is for the
singleheartedness of love centered on Christ and the mission entrusted to him
by Christ. There can be no distractions from this love. This is the chaste
celibacy of Jesus Christ who was entirely focused upon the mission entrusted to
Him by His Heavenly Father with an unbroken gaze. The chastity of the angels is
the unbroken gaze of the angels upon God as the beloved — no distraction. Priests
especially are to be entirely focused upon Christ and His mission; we ask Him
to save us from distraction. The people of God need to see Christ in their
priest and not a bachelor or a fop.
Priestly
life necessarily involves caring about people as Christ cares for them. It is
about caring for people by teaching them and sharing with them the truth of the
Gospel and of lifelong conversion to the truth even though that conversion
might cost us suffering and rejection. For example, the great Carmelite saint, John of the Cross, did not
suffer from the hands of Moslems, or atheists, or from the rebels of the
Protestant reformation. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who did not want
to live the authentic faith. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who
preferred to make the Church and their vocation a membership in an elite club
directed to doing their own will. This was his cross that he carried out of
love for Christ for the sake of the very people who rejected God. In many ways,
it is the share in the cross offered by faithful priests and laity today in a
world made hostile not so much by secularists as by former Catholics, laity, and
clergy, who have been frustrated by the inflexibility of the Gospel to conform
to their own preferences.
To be
stretched for greater glory is our experience and share of the Cross of Jesus
Christ. Priests especially are called to embrace this stretching by Christ for
the sake of the salvation of the people who, like ourselves, are not inclined
in their human condition to embrace the same mystery of the cross because it
hurts. So, in the life of the priest there is no substitute for leading by
example. A priest will credibly preach Christ crucified when the people can see
Christ’s wounds in the life of the priest. What does our vocation cost us? What
are we freely willing to give? What are the authentic expectations we should
have of our priests in their ministry? Are we willing to be challenged by our
priests, or do we simply want them to entertain us and reinforce our own
preferences and prejudices?
To get beyond the limits of this world and
our natural end, for both the laity and the clergy, requires us to love as
Christ loved, which always entails the cross — not suffering for its own sake,
not simply being in pain, not emotional codependence, but suffering rejection
for the sake of the truth, including the truth that we are sinners redeemed and
loved by God who created us, died for us, and sanctifies us. The cross is the
way by which we come to know Christ and the way by which we prepare to rise
with Him. As Pope Benedict XVI once wrote, “We have come to believe in God’s
love: in these words, the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his
life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea,
but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a
decisive direction.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says and means, “Whoever loves
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his
cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose
it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”