Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

IDEAL LIFE

            In today’s Gospel Jesus seem to remind us what “Ideal life” really is. Jesus invites us to a life of total detachment. He makes a radical statement to the effect that he wants his disciples to love him more than their fathers and mothers. The love the disciple has for Jesus should far outweigh the love (s)he has for himself/herself. He goes on to say that the one who wishes to save his/her life will lose it but the one who loses his/her life for the sake of Jesus will save it. The radicality of the statement lies in the fact that unless the disciple dies to his attachments in life (s)he cannot begin a new and graceful life in Jesus.

            This Gospel is highly monastic in its spirituality. Gospel statements like these drove many of the saints to the desert to abandon all earthly attachments in order to attach themselves to the Lord alone. Is the Lord inviting all of us to monastic spirituality? Not really but those who have the vocation to monastic life of simplicity and detachment would discover that it is the best of lives. We should note that not all of us have the vocation to be monks or hermits but for the sake of experience you can spend a weekend in a monastery as some of my friends at Sacred Heart do once a while. On the high side the Gospel invites some to monastic spirituality while on “low” side it invites each and every one of us to a life of detachment from mundane things.

            On detachment, let us take it section by section to understand today’s Gospel demands. The first demand is “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…” We should note that Jesus in no way calling for disunity in family ties but if one’s relations/love ones would be a hindrance to the person’s life in Christ, then Jesus invites the person to choose him rather than the choice of a father or mother; son or daughter. On this the Christian can find an example in the exemplary life of St. Francis of Assisi. When Bernardo (St. Francis’ father) wanted St. Francis to choose between love of him and love of Jesus; St Francis choose love of Jesus and abandoned all the promised inheritance his father’s love was to gain for him. For some people, they think wealth is an indicator of a better and joyous life. One can only think this way when (s)he is spiritually blind to a life in Christ.

            The next radical statement in today’s Gospel is “…and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This is the benchmark for “the Christ discipleship.” Unless one arrives at this point in his/her Christian life, (s)he has not arrived in a life in Christ. The Christian life is firmly rooted in the paschal mystery. We need to die to all mundane attractions, desires, passions and relations; if we are to have a taste of a better life in Jesus. This is the best of lives, I would like to assure you.

            It is when one has commerce living this life of total detachment from the mundane things of the world and attach himself/herself to Jesus that (s)he can live fruitfully the last section of today Gospel. Because one has gone through a “transfiguration” and has taken the complete likeness to Jesus, the Lord states that whoever does any good to the person does it to him. How awesome! This is a beautiful life, isn’t it? In being ready to receive God’s messenger, whether he is a “prophet”, a “holy man” or a “mere” disciple of Christ (and who is not one of these “little ones”?), one receives a share in God’s grace. Both the receiver and the received should know this. The one received radiates something of his charism of mission wherever he is given opportunity to do so. We have a marvelous example of this in the first reading: the woman of Shunem, who hosts the prophet Elisha and even set aside a room for his regular use, receives from him what she dared not hope for: despite her husband’s advanced age she receives a son. The fruitfulness of the prophetic mission expresses itself in an Old Testament sense in this physical fruitfulness of the receiving woman. In the New Covenant the gift can be an even greater spiritual fruitfulness.

            In the second reading St. Paul shows that this dying and burial with Jesus includes hope of a resurrected life for God with Christ, a hope, however, that excludes any self-seeking calculation of regaining the loss. Only the “old man” could do that sort of calculation; whereas in dying in Christ we become new people and death (to which belongs any sort of egotistical thinking) has no more hold over us. Christ died “to sin” not only by robbing sin of its power over the world once and for all, but also by taking away sin’s power over humankind. He lives “for God” in absolute devotion to God for the sake of God’s saving will for the world. As those who have died to sin, we are required likewise “to live for God in Christ Jesus”, that is, to put ourselves at the disposal of God’s saving work in the world in the same attitude as Jesus.

            Let us learn to empty ourselves of the vanities of this world and pray that Jesus will fill us with himself – this will be our path towards an Ideal Life.