8 September 2019
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
“If anyone comes to me without hating…even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Today we hear the Call of Christ the King as He summons His disciples from far and wide, telling them what it means to follow Him. After all, being a disciple is more than just hearing Jesus or knowing about Him; did He not tell us two Sundays ago that being admitted into the house of God requires not only knowledge of the Master, but also that you have followed Him in your deeds (Luke 13:22-30)? If we are followers of Christ then let us follow Him, placing our feet in His every footprint, all the way to Calvary: all the way to Heaven.
Jesus tells us that we cannot be His disciple otherwise; it simply will not work. Why is this? It is because, as Venerable Fulton Sheen once said “Christ did not come to make us nice people. He came to make us new men.” He did not come to Earth to show us a better way to live, or to impart to us a divine wisdom, but rather to transform us into sons and daughters of God: He came to transform us, and that can only happen if we are taught and empowered to let go of the things of this world in order to more fully embrace the things of God. That is what the Cross represents; that is the knowledge gained by eating the fruit of this tree.
When we look at Jesus upon the Cross we see a man who has given up everything: His friends and His own people had abandoned Him, He was stripped of all legal protection, of dignity, even His clothing. Just before He died He gave away His mother, His breath, His Spirit, His Body and Blood. Everything, all in obedience to His Father, all for love of us. “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich,” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Our King, having surrendered everything for our sake, now asks us to follow Him likewise, not only along the same path but in the same manner, because we cannot reach Heaven any other way.
How will we have enough to achieve our goal of Heaven? Only by renouncing our earthly possessions for what God will give us: Heaven is not something we achieve but rather something we receive from God, and if we desire eternity with God then we must be freed from anything that ties us to the temporary. Otherwise we will fall short of our goal. And should we look toward Heaven and fear that we are going to fall short, why would we not seek peace and reconciliation now, while there is time? For every sin is opposition to God; if we desire to dwell in His house or eternity, why would we not strive—to the best of our ability—to rid ourselves of everything in us that opposes Him by going to confession, by doing penance, by freeing ourselves from every earthly bondage?
Jesus is asking you to follow Him, for He says His desire is “…that where I am you also may be,” (John 15:3, 17:24). So we take up our cross, emptying our hands and hearts so that the Cross of Jesus, the very instrument of our redemption, may be our only true possession in this world so that the life that was given upon it may be our only possession in the world to come.