“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.”
and
“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.”
I wonder by how much the huge crowd that followed Jesus thinned when He spoke those hard words. Because hard they were and probably incomprehensible for most listeners – just as it is even now.
After all one of the Ten Commandments says “Honor your father and your mother” and a blessing is attached to it – “so that you may live long and prosper..” Now, how can one “hate” them at the same time?
Again, love of brothers and sisters, the closest family members is the most natural bond which sustains us in this valley of tears. How can we “hate” them?
Also, elsewhere Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as “ourselves” – therefore one’s own life is naturally not to be easily discarded or “hated”. Life is to be treasured. How can we hate our own life?
And yet – sometimes choices have to be made, very difficult choices, too. Without God’s grace we are unable to make them – and be disciples still.
Those orange clad Copts who died kneeling on the shores of the Mediterranean sea, beheaded by modern barbarians, chose Christ over their lives. So did the many, many other martyrs over the past two thousand years – but never so many as in our times.
Countless Christians take up their various crosses daily: spiritual struggles at a particular stage of priesthood, difficult, mismatched marriages, divisions, humiliations or injustices suffered in family, parish, convent, you name it.
There is no bad place for the cross to grow. There is no bad road to carry it along.
Each morning countless people wake up to those hard – to- bear circumstances and yet surprisingly few dump their cross and run to greener pastures when they can. Because of Christ – because of the vows taken in His name, for Him, with Him, in His presence.
My uncle’s wife became mentally ill during the 2nd World War. Violent arrest of her husband (by Gestapo) triggered the first schizophrenic episode. The couple had two small children at that time. Aunt Helen spent the rest of her life in and out of the hospital. The uncle worked and struggled to bring up the children – and was very successful in this. Over the years countless friends advised him to divorce the sick wife and remarry. He probably could even have his Catholic marriage annulled. He did not. Very discreet in his faith, man of few pious words, he held on to his vows – and went to Mass daily – something few people were aware of.
Sometimes choosing Christ literally rips family apart. This happens when someone undergoes deep conversion while living in the family which until that time had been indifferent or hostile to Christianity.
I know a young woman who every evening says rosary on the fingers of her hands, not on proper beads. She prays silently in her marriage bed, turned away from her husband, so that he would not see her moving lips and that timid cross she makes. He had “spirited away” her Communion picture, her rosaries and her Bible right after they were married – in church.
Otherwise a caring husband and a good father, he hates anything to do with religion, especially Catholic. What he does not know is that his wife not only prays, but also comes to Mass every day – before work. This half-hour quiet service gives her strength and hope for the rest of the day – and certainty of future conversion of her family.
When you choose Christ, God’s grace comes with great power and miracles take plece.
I remember a young woman who arranged her Church marriage in complete secrecy, fearing her dominant, though loving mother who was hoping she would divorce her husband she did not approve of. The young couple had taken civil vows. The husband was an agnostic, raised in atheistic family and did not care about church marriage.
Still the young woman felt painfully that something (or Someone) was missing.
One day she was passing by her old parish church she had not been to for several years. She admitted later that she did not know why she turned off the sidewalk and walked into it suddenly. It so happened that this was the day of Lenten confession.. so, again without thinking, she joined the line of women who were waiting in front of several confessionals.. God’s grace is so unexpected sometimes..
And soon the couple was married in the same church, in presence of Jesus, who became her greatest love and freed her of all fears forever.
No wedding gown, no wedding party, no guests.. – yet so much joy of being back..at last – back HOME.
Jesus is with us when we choose Him over others we love. He also cares for those we seem to have abandoned for His sake.
Great saints, like St Theresa of Calcutta, made their great choices which bore great fruit but also needed God’ s grace in proportional degree.
Would Mother Therese have survived without God’s grace? When she left her original congregation she was homeless and destitute, a European woman on dangerous streets of the city which is accustomed to people dying on its sidewalks. In that city death by starvation is also believed to lead to a better next life.
Years later there were 4000 sisters in white-blue saris working in the worst spots of all continents.
Miracles of God.