TWENTY THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR "C"

Cycle “C”:  Lk 14, 25- 33

THE FAMILY AND DISCIPLESHIP

            Today’s Gospel presents a very challenging picture of discipleship. Jesus turns to address the crowds that accompany him on his way to Jerusalem  - the way that leads to his crucifixion  -  and he makes three radical demands on them.

First, he tells them that family ties and their own self-interests must not take priority over following him.

Secondly, they must be willing to accept the cross of self-denial as they follow in his footsteps.

And thirdly, they must have the detachment to be able to say goodbye to worldly possessions.

To be a disciple means to be a learner; from the Latin verb, “discere”: to learn.

Children are learners. They learn from their teachers, in school, but more especially at home. The schoolteacher is only an extension of the parents, who are, therefore, the first teachers. Procreation and education of children go together; not procreation without education. Education is a prolongation of procreation.

The task of self-development goes on till death; we have never done with education. And the best teachers are those who are still willing to learn. This development is physical, academic, social, moral and spiritual. The parents, the first teachers of the child, initiate this development. And when the child enters school, it is monitored and fostered by the parents. And, as all parents will testify, it is not an easy task. It wasn’t easy for Jesus, nor for his disciples  -  his learners.

The gentle and forgiving Jesus of St. Luke’s gospel may come across as austere and demanding in today’s Gospel passage. In changing from gentleness to austerity, he resembles the parent or teacher who encourages at one stage and challenges at another. In challenging his disciples in the way he does, he is paying them a great compliment: he knows they can take it. He warns against complacency and shows the heights to which he believes his followers can ascend with his help. He believes that his followers can ascend. So it’s not so much that his disciples have faith in him as he has faith in his disciples. Hence in making these demands, Jesus is doing no more than issuing an invitation to change, to grow and to be more like him.

My dear parents, Faith is a supernatural virtue, not a natural virtue, which means that it is first and foremost an act of God. It is God who has faith in you and me, which is why he opens up a future for us. In the same way, you have faith in your children, and you open up a future for them. Hope is also a supernatural virtue, which means that it is God who has hopes for our future. In the same way, parents have hopes for the future of their children. What they hope for is attainable, though they have to work hard for it.

And, finally, Love. We love God since we know that he has loved us first. What is love? Love is the effective desire for the good of the other. The operative word is “effective.” That is to say, we shall get down to doing something practical for the good of the other. God does that for us in a very practical way by empowering us to lead a good life. And that is what parents do for their children  -  empowering them to stand on their feet and become self-reliant. But without an inflexible faith in God, persevering hope in him and enduring love for him, this will never be possible. These three virtues will animate and inspire their other human qualities, academic excellence and professional competence. Dear parents, see that your children grow up to be men and women of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and crystal clear honesty. In this task, you are irreplaceable.

            If we are to accept Jesus’ radical invitation to follow in his footsteps by carrying our cross daily, we need to be inspired by another kind of wisdom than that offered by the world. Worldly wisdom will never inspire anyone in the direction of the cross. Do we teach our sons and daughters the wisdom of self-denial, explaining to them why they should not have or do according to their every whim and craving; or do we shield our children from facing the cross of duty and self-restraint?

The Holy Family of Nazareth was not a piece of poetry or a lovely painting. The first Christmas stable was crawling with dangerous vermin and choking with the reek of animal dung. No hot running water. Imagine the cold drafts cutting into the baby Jesus. Soon after his birth, the family was under sentence of death and had to flee as refugees. We’ve seen them on TV. How would you feel if your son was always wanted by the police, at all times under sentence of death?  Many parents complain that their kids think they know everything. Can you speculate how difficult it must have been to raise a son who actually did know everything, the young lad Jesus who answered back: “Why were you looking for me?  Didn’t you know I had to be, etc. etc..”  What an answer! And he did not even address Mary as “Mother”.

And yet, we are told, “He went down to Nazareth with them and was subject to them.”   How do sons and daughters take that line now-a-days?

From my own experience as a son and student, as engineering apprentice, as a seminarian and finally as priest and professor of philosophy and theology, I realise that punctuality is an important factor of family discipline. Where are the children after 9.30 p.m.?

Where are they at other times? Times for meals, for prayers and evening study? Can the whole family sit together for the principal meals, and pray together for its own stability and happiness? Or is the home a cheap hotel where people come and go as they like without permission or information? Have discipline and obedience become unmentionable words?  Shall we insist that our children be educated into integral and competent human beings or turn out to be half-baked specimens of humanity, unable to face a competitive world?  Shall our children learn from us our prayers and refined vocabulary, or monosyllabic expletives and words of destructive criticism?

People, especially children, do not become good by being told to; they must be charmed into goodness, which, like love is not taught but caught. The environment in which we have been raised and in which we raise our children is essential to our formation and development. A family is a very human environment; in fact, the first a child is introduced to: the joy, the pain, the drama and the ordinary events of our lives are lived within its confines. God chose to mould and form his Son within the environment and culture of a family. He hasn’t broken the mould since, and thrown it away, because in his mind the family continues to be the place of holiness, love and emotional sustenance.  The Holy Family of Nazareth tells us that in God the family is not extinct.

Let me end with the story of a sailor named George. Most of his adult life he’d been on the high seas. He had never married, and now he was old and retired, living with his nephew Bill. Bill was married and had a few children. He had never travelled. All the travelling he could do was to listen to the travelogues of his sailor uncle George. Uncle George noticed there were times that Bill was fed up of family life  -  arguments with his wife, paying bills, children’s illnesses, etc..He often told his uncle, “I wish I was free to roam the world as you did.”  One evening, after supper, the old sailor told the family about a certain map of buried treasure in his possession and that he would leave it to them at his death. Some years later sailor George died. Nephew Bill located the map. It was in an envelope addressed, in fact, to Bill himself. His hands shook in anticipation as he opened the envelope. It took him just a few moments to read the map. The direction led to the very house in which he stood. George the sailor was telling him from the grave: “Your own home and your family are your treasure. Don’t blow it. Enjoy it while you have to.”