Hi everyone. I hope you had a great summer. Connie and I did a good bit of traveling and enjoyed immersing ourselves in God’s creative beauty and wonder.
We visited Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Denali, and Kenai Fjords National Parks as well as quite a few other beautiful places. You may know that we’ve been working on getting to all 50 states. Alaska was number 50 for us in August. We still have places we want to visit but getting number 50 under our belt feels like a nice accomplishment. If you did something really interesting over the summer I’d love to hear about it.
This week’s Gospel is about the cost of discipleship. Jesus warns those who might follow Him that there is a cost top doing that and you should calculate your ability to pay that cost before you go down that road. He uses hyperbolic language to tell us we should hate others and our very lives if we are to follow Him. We know He doesn’t really mean we should kick our spouses and children and parents to the curb. What He really is saying is we have to prefer Him over the people and things of this world.
For some people this can be a hard teaching. I think what He is really doing here is making sure people understand what it means to really be His disciple. He is cautioning against a casual Christianity, and I think He’s right. What does it mean to be His disciple? It means to follow His commandments to love and forgive and serve, for example. And to not let other relationships or responsibilities get in the way of that. I think it’s fair to say Jesus doesn’t like lukewarm.
Relationship is the most important thing here. Putting our relationship with Jesus first is the most important thing in discipleship. It will lead to other things, to be sure, but it is the primacy of that relationship that really makes us disciples.
Living the sacramental life of the Church will strengthen us to resist the conflicts that can threaten our discipleship but it is the primacy of that relationship with Christ that will provide the basis for everything else we do in His name.
So, as we consider today’s Gospel it’s a good time to reflect on our relationship with Jesus and ask ourselves, and honestly answer, if there are people, or things of this world that are keeping us from being the disciple we’re called to be. If there are, maybe we need to adjust our interaction with those people and things to lessen their inhibiting effect of that most important relationship.
A couple of weeks ago the awful mass murder of students and injuring of students and adults at Annunciation parish church and school in Minnesota shook all of us. I think that’s especially true about those of us that have a school associated with our Church as you do at Blessed Sacrament and I do at St. Michael’s in Auburn, AL. As a side note I was attending 8:30 Mass with our students when the Minnesota shooting was going on. It gave me a creepy feeling when I received the breaking news notification on my way home after Mass.
The day after the shooting Dr. Tod Worner, of the Word on Fire Institute wrote this article and I thought I would share it with you: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/annunciation-church-and-the-annunciation/?queryID=c0b3765dc4c1804bfc362c6a2e7c1087
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
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