Reflection on the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 14: 25-33

“Anyone of you who does not renounce all possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Today’s Gospel is not the one for Ascension Thursday but it reminded me of Sister Helen Jean’s words to us one morning in June as my classmates and I were discussing driving to St. Louis to begin studies at Webster. Helen Jean reminded us of the Gospel we heard on Ascension Thursday at our Profession Mass and this important sentence: “Why are you standing around looking up to heaven? Get busy!” 

Jesus gets to “being busy” about discipleship in today’s Gospel. He says, “If anyone comes to me hating his/her life, they cannot be my disciple”; “whoever can’t carry his own cross cannot be my disciple”; “who wants to construct a tower but can’t complete it? Not my disciple.”

 And finally, the tough statement we all know: “Whoever does not renounce all possessions cannot be my disciple.”

I think, like the disciples who “got it” one day but not the next, we have all had our moments of accepting the call to discipleship, about feeling certain about Christ’s love and God’s presence in our lives, and then we have all had moments of wondering if God disappeared, leaving a small bunch of us to carry on the mission.

I think this Gospel is a call to remember who we are, people filled with the Spirit of God, yet we do stand around sometimes and wait for a call. We have that temptation to look up to heaven to see if God is going to do anything, and we, like some of Jesus’ disciples, never take the mission into our own hands. Remember the text for Ascension Thursday: The disciple had a final conversation with the Risen Jesus. They ask him, “Are you finally going to establish the kingdom we have been waiting for? And Jesus responds for the thousand time, “It is not for you to know yet, wait for the Holy Spirit.”

I understand the disciple’s insecurity. They did not know at what hour they would be put to the test. When Jesus asked the disciples to give away everything and follow him, he was calling them to put faith into action. Discipleship is not for the faint of heart. It is hard to “wait for the Holy Spirit.” It is hard to renounce everything for the sake of the Gospel.

Luke tells us how it works. We have been given the mission through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But sometimes we ask, “What now?” 

We can read of one Christian who knew the answer: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was a bold theologian and martyred for his faith. A man who always gets to the main point of life: Jesus Christ. He writes, “We have no time to sit down and ask ourselves … who is our neighbor or what is the action I should do in this situation? We must obey the Gospel … we are confronted by the call of Jesus to spontaneous obedience. We must act in faith.  And when we do act in faith, we follow the Lord beneath the cross, to be the people of the Mediator, Jesus, the people under the cross. The disciples were amazed at the road Jesus called them to follow.” (From “The Cost of Discipleship,” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer) 

I Am the Way tells us, “We inherit a tradition which knows the cross and is no stranger to hardships. We continue to extend the boundaries of learning and justice, of human dignity and peace, of active faith and pastoral concern through works of education and efforts on behalf of the poor.”

Our life begins and ends in Christ. The Eucharist we share today is the sign that we are with Christ and in Christ, and He is in us. Bonhoeffer writes, “There is nothing new in all of this. We are simply following in the footsteps of the first disciples of Jesus.” 

Let’s remember this sentence: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” We are Christians at God’s initiative. And the only point of being chosen is to spread the love of God and Good News we have received from Jesus. We are disciples.