With Opened Bible
“CARRY YOUR CROSS AND COME AFTER ME.”
This Sunday's Gospel challenges us to grasp it and proclaim it better. Jesus asks us to give him first place in all things, even in our relationships with family members like our father and mother. "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."
Let's return to the greatest commandment that Jesus recommends to his disciples: "to love one's neighbor as oneself" (John 13), or to the Law of Moses recommending "to honor one's father and mother" (Exodus 20:12), or to St. Paul encouraging husbands to love their wives (Ephesians 25:25- 33). These references, along with others such as Mathew 10:37-39 and Luke 14:26, provide a comprehensive view of love and respect in the Bible. Considering all these biblical references to love and respect, how can Jesus ask us to hate our family (father, mother, husband, wife, brother, and sister) to be his disciple? What is the true meaning of this statement? What did Jesus mean?
To better understand the scope of this statement, we must first seek to define the expression "being disciple" according to the Bible. Following Jesus, becoming his disciple, means "accepting God's will in its entirety without any compromise." Being a disciple means leaving everything behind (like Jesus lowering himself to our human condition) to embrace the will of God.
Hating one's family or leaving all one's possessions is not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end. It means making room for God by making him the sole Head of one's life. Thus, hating one's family means 'loving them less so that we can love God more; giving God all the space in everything we undertake and achieve. Let him be the center of everything. In doing so, we can assimilate ourselves to his person to the point of proclaiming with the apostle Saint Paul of Tarsus: 'Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.' (Galatians 2:20)
