04/11/2025

Wednesday Week 31 Ordinary Time

I am one of the "Great Crowd" who accompanied Jesus in this morning's Gospel. Jesus turns to us all and basically says "Do you know what you are doing?"

We cannot partially follow the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. His human personality, his teachings attract millions of us to say "Lord, Lord!" but to truly follow him requires perseverance and total commitment only to him. Each step that he took on Earth led ultimately to the cross on Calvary where he "bled-out" in agony.

To be a follower of Jesus means that we are ready to live in this world exactly as he did and fight against all the temptations that disguise themselves as "normal" human activities. "Thou shalt not kill" means exactly that and even to protect our selves and possessions from "the strong man" dealing out death to another human is always wrong.

Wealth that has accumulated over centuries is all a product of sin for it has always been ultimately protected by war and it has always distracted us from the Way, Truth and Life. The actual living and breathing people who were rushing after Jesus in this morning's Gospel reading knew as much as we about our "normal" human concerns, family, wealth and protection. 

They too felt our shock at "Hate your mother and father etc". Those who did not abandon him, however, were able to come to the difficult understanding of "So, therefore, any of you who does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple".

Two thousand years later, we know much more than did those disciples who saw the face of Jesus, heard with their living ears his words but for generation after generation we continue to miss the whole point of Incarnation/Resurrection.

We have to direct our whole living beings to do only the will of God. We do this first of all by obeying the Ten Commandments and then we can access the "Love" poured out for us on Calvary but it is up to us whether or not we make this our priority in Life even though doing so denies completely the norms of contemporary life.