The message of the Gospel passage for this Sunday might seem shocking at first sight. What could Jesus possibly mean by this statement: "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" (Matthew 14:26)? Doesn't Jesus want us to love our families? Doesn't he want us to have a healthy sense of self-love? How should we interpret his words?
To understand his words in this passage, we need to bear in mind two important aspects of the society in which Jesus proclaimed the Gospel. Ancient Israelite culture relied greatly, as do many cultures today, on the use of hyperbole, which entails deliberate and often excessive exaggeration in order to drive a point home. The manner in which Jesus spoke very much reflected the conventions of his culture.
For example, in another passage Jesus says that if our eyes offend us, by enabling us to fall into sin, like lustful thoughts, we should pluck them out. Or if our hand offends us, by enabling us to engage in sin, like theft, we should cut it off. Christians have never taken these words literally but have understood that Jesus was using strong exaggeration in order to emphasize how destructive sin is for us spiritually. Likewise, when Jesus is speaking about hating our family members and even our very selves, he is not speaking about hate in a literal sense. He is speaking about being single-minded in our dedication to God and being willing to set everything aside that might get in the way.
Which leads us to the second cultural aspect that we need to consider in order to understand the Gospel passage for this Sunday. Ancient Israelite society consisted of tight-knit extended family groups. Each person derived their identity from the family to which they belonged. On the one hand, the family provided a tremendous amount of protection and support. If there was trouble from the outside world, each member of the family could count on the whole group rallying around them.
On the other hand, the family structure also required a strong sense of loyalty and adherence to the family's way of life. The notion of individualism, of charting one's own trajectory in life with no regard to the traditions of one's family was simply unheard of. Every custom, every standard, every belief was determined by a person's family. The idea of practicing a religion different from the family's religion was unthinkable.
What could the followers of Jesus do if they were the only ones in their family who decided to become a Christian? They would face rejection and ostracism. In some cases, they might even face the threat of death. In such situations, they would have to break with their families, not out of hatred, but in order to be able to follow Christ.
Christ is the meaning of life. Christ is the only true fulfillment of the human heart. We must put Christ in the very center of our lives, letting go of anything that would try to draw us away from him. Christ must be first, last, and always, above everything else in life.
But having Christ in the center does not mean that we no longer love others. Quite the contrary. The more Christ is in our center, the more capable we become of healthy, well-ordered love for all others. In fact, only when Christ is in our center can we love truly, unselfishly, with genuine love.
In today's culture, we too might face rejection and ostracism from our families because we are following Christ. Family members might treat us with hatred and might cut off all ties with us as a result. But no matter what the situation is, we should not waver in our absolute commitment to Christ.
If we do experience persecution from family members because of our faith, we should love them all the more, doing all that we can to bring the love of Christ into their lives. Sometimes all we can do is love from a distance, praying and fasting for our loved ones who do not love us because of Christ. We should pray unceasingly for them and fast too, regularly. Even if our efforts do not seem to bring about healing in this life, we can hope that through our prayers and fasting our family members will find Christ before the end and that we will be together for all eternity in Heaven.
At the same time, if our own families refuse to engage with us because of our commitment to following Christ, the Christian community should function as our new family. In a different passage Jesus says: "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come" (Mark 10:29-30). The Christian community is to be the embodiment of a perfect family, living according to the teachings of Christ. One challenge for all of us is to evaluate just how well our own parish communities live out the calling to be an authentic Christian family.
The Second Reading, taken from St. Paul's Letter to Philemon, a leader in the Colossian community, draws attention to this challenge in the context of the early Church. At the time of Christ, slavery was still considered an acceptable practice. Needless to say, the Gospel message of Christ condemns slavery. But given how deeply entrenched the practice was in ancient Mediterranean society, uprooting slavery from the developing Christian communities took some time.
Philemon himself owned one slave, Onesimus, the subject of the letter. Onesimus ran away from Philemon and sought shelter with the Apostle Paul. After some time, Paul decided to send Onesimus back to Philemon, but with the instruction that Philemon must free the slave and thenceforth treat him as his brother. Paul indicated that he could command Philemon to do so, given Paul's own standing in the Church, but instead he was merely entreating Philemon to act according to his request. Paul's message was clear. If Philemon wanted to be a true follower of Christ, he had to repudiate the practice of slavery and treat his former slave as his own brother, the same way he would treat the Apostle Paul himself.
The New Testament does not tell us how Philemon acted, though later tradition suggests that he did indeed free Onesimus, who then became an active leader of the local Church himself. But though we do not know the outcome for sure, we can apply the challenge of the letter to our own lives. Are there practices in our own lives that are not in line with the Gospel of Christ? Do we need to uproot certain ways of being or ways of doing things from our day-to-day lives? Let us pray to receive the grace to know how we must reshape our lives so that the healing light, the infinite love of Christ can imbue us to the core of our being.
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The readings for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C, are:
Wisdom 9:13-18b
Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17
Philemon 9-10, 12-17
Luke 14:25-33
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Conversion of St. Paul by Michaelangelo from Wikimedia Commons.