We are again reminded at the beginning of our Gospel reading that we are journeying with Jesus. The inspired author of St. Luke’s Gospel notes that at this stage of his journey, the Lord is accompanied by “crowds.”1 Probably many in these crowds wondered where Jesus was headed. You may sometimes wonder where the Lord is leading you, especially when the road takes an unexpected turn, or bypasses the route to a destination you desire.
But being Jesus’s disciple requires you to overcome a certain naivete about where you are headed by following him. As Jesus makes clear in our Gospel today, his destination is not only Jerusalem but the cross. This is why he says, again- “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come me… cannot be my disciple.”2 The reason that such a person cannot be Jesus’s disciple is because s/he refuses to journey to the destination, thus refusing her/his destiny. The fruit of our meditation on the fifth Mystery of the Blessed Virgin's Holy Rosary, the Crucifixion, is perseverance.
To refuse the cross is to reject the Gospel. As we heard three weeks ago in one of our readings from the Letter to the Hebrews: “preferring the joy that lay before him, [Jesus] endured a cross, disdaining its shame.”3 Like our Master, we should prefer the joy that lays beyond the cross: God's kingdom.
Jesus invites you to follow him. He does not compel, coerce, or manipulate you. Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon gives us an idea of what extending Jesus’s invitation to others looks like in reality. Too often, in my view, we tell stories about the Scriptures at the expense of the stories we find in the Scriptures thus often obscuring the overarching story the Scriptures communicate. As the Bible translator and Church father St. Jerome insisted: “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” Only once in the 3-year cycle of Sunday readings do we read from Philemon, which letter conveys a compelling real-life set of circumstances.
In his approach to Philemon, a Christian slave-owner, Paul is very Christ-like. The crux of the matter is that a slave of Philemon’s, named Onesimus, left without permission to journey with Paul, who was being taken as a prisoner to Rome.
Paul’s arrest, his arraignment before the Roman governor Felix, who imprisoned him in Caesarea for two years, then before Felix’s successor, Festus, who turned the matter over to King Agrippa, is chronicled in the final 8 chapters of the book of Acts. Both Festus and Agrippa wanted to acquit and release Paul, who was charged with inciting riots by preaching what some fellow Jews considered to be heresy, namely Christianity. It is ironic that this is what Paul formerly persecuted Christians for, beginning with his instigating the fatal stoning of Stephen. Because Paul already invoked his right as a Roman citizen to have his case adjudicated at the imperial court in Rome, they did not acquit him.
Realizing Onesimus left without Philemon’s approval, Paul sent him back with a letter. In the letter, Paul urges Philemon to deal gently with Onesimus, noting that their relationship as brothers in Christ trumps their master/slave relationship. In and through Christ, Paul insists, they are equals. Hence, Philemon should treat Onesimus as a brother, not punish him as a runaway slave. Far from endorsing slavery, this letter gives us a glimpse of the subversive nature of Paul’s radical message about the equality of all people in and through Christ.
Icon of Saint Onesimus, Wikipedia
Instead of invoking his apostleship to keep Onesimus, whom he describes as his “child,” and his “own heart,” with him, Paul avoids forcing Philemon’s hand. 4 The apostle does not present Philemon with a fait accompli, lest Philemon’s “goodness” be something imposed on him. Rather, in his pastoral concern, Paul sends Onesimus back and gives Philemon the opportunity to act in a genuinely righteous way toward his slave for the sake of the Gospel.5
Paul’s insistence that who they are in Christ by virtue of baptism overrides the master/slave relationship between Philemon and Onesimus sheds light on what Jesus says about prioritizing following him over everything and everyone else. As he does quite often, Jesus in this passage uses hyperbole when he enjoins his hearers to “hate” their spouses, parents, children, and even their own lives.6
It is by experiencing the love of God in Christ and responding to God’s love that you come to love yourself justly and form healthier, more loving attachments with your spouse, parents, children, friends, whomever. In other words, a relationship with God through Christ makes you less emotionally needy, less prone to crush others under the weight of your needs, of your insecurities, your fears. We often recite the Prayer of Saint Francis, in which we pray:
O divine master grant that I mayIn today’s Gospel, Jesus urges anyone who would follow him to calculate the cost of doing so. Following Jesus does not merely require some inchoate something. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives himself whole and complete. In return, he asks you to give yourself to God completely.
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
It’s “a thing” among some Christians to choose a “life verse.” A “life verse” is a Scripture verse that succinctly captures for the one who adopts it what it means to follow Christ; a verse that inspires and challenges. If I were to adopt such a verse, it would almost certainly be the opening verses of the twelfth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans:
Therefore, I implore you, brothers [and sisters], by God’s mercies, to present your bodies as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God… do not be configured to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the intellect, so you may test the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect7Were today not Sunday, we would celebrate the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the model Christian disciple. Our Blessed Mother’s fiat (i.e., the words with which she accepted the call to bear God’s Son), when translated with a bit more precision than we usually encounter, serves as a great summary of God's word today: “See: the slave of the Lord; may it happen to me as you have said.”8
1 Luke 14:25.↩
2 Luke 14:27.↩
3 Hebrews 12:2 in The New Testament: A Translation, trans. David Bentley Hart, Yale University Press, 452.↩
4 Philemon 10.12.↩
5 Philemon 14.↩
6 Luke 14:26.↩
7 Romans 12:1-2 in The New Testament: A Translation, 311.↩
8 Luke 1:38 in The New Testament: A Translation, 105..↩
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