It is one thing to ask us to renounce our possessions. People have given up all kinds of pleasures for different reasons: sacrificing for their children, saving up for years to get something they really want, giving away much of what they own because they see that others have a greater and more basic need.
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
We know that Jesus is saying both “more” and “less” here, because this teaching fits into a whole Gospel and cannot be read accurately isolated from the rest.
Nowhere would Jesus advocate hating one’s parents. Nowhere would Jesus suggest hating oneself.
Jesus, like many other places in the scriptures, and like any teacher or parent, used a communication device called “hyperbole,” defined as: “A gross exaggeration to make a point.”
But at the same time, Jesus was absolutely serious about putting the Gospel first — over everyone and everything.
The truth is that they are not necessarily opposed to each other. What Jesus brings before our eyes and our consideration is: Do we wish to “live” or to “LIVE”?
Living and LIVING are very different things.
For example, to say that “I forgive someone but I never want to talk to them again” is different from saying “I forgive them and want the best for them, and will consider a new relationship, probably with different boundaries than before.”
There is a difference between “forgiving” and “FORGIVING.”
In other words, once again, Jesus is after TRANSFORMATION!
He wants every relationship with every person and thing in our lives to be different. He wants us to reconsider and rename our relationship with family, friends, enemies, money, jobs, free time, service, compassion, and prayer.
If Jesus and the Gospel are first, it does not mean we won’t have family and friends in our life. It doesn’t even necessarily mean we will spend less time with them.
In fact, if Jesus and the Gospel come first, it might even mean in some cases that I need to spend more time with family or friends. The Gospel will ask of us to look carefully at how we use our possessions, how we spend, how we buy, and how we live with everything.
The Gospel of Jesus is about placing a value on persons and things always in the context of love.
The reason we sometimes give up something is for love — whether it be of others, self, or of the thing itself – to preserve or share it more generously with others.
Each of us will, no doubt, decide each of these things in light of our discipleship with Jesus, in light of where we are with the Gospel.
And each will discover growth personally at our own rate, in our own time, and say yes to transformation one step at a time!
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 14th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at perry.leiker@gmail.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.
