TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR C
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
A good Sunday for everyone.
Recall that last week, Jesus was at a table in the house of a leader of the Pharisees. It was quite a stormy Sabbath meal, and Jesus had taken advantage of the opportunity to give precise indications to those who accepted his invitation to enter the banquet of the kingdom of God. He said: 'You must choose the last place, always be ready to serve all, even to those less agreeable. You cannot act thinking of personal interest but for pure gratuitousness, for the joy of seeing happy those you benefit, and do not expect gratitude or thanks, no; always act and only to see happy those who need your service.'
This gratuitousness is the characteristic of the love that Jesus asks of his disciples. He already spoke of it in Luke chapter 6, when he says: "If you love those who love you, where is your gratuitousness? Sinners also love their friends. Where is your gratuitousness if you do good to those who do good to you? Even sinners do this. Where is your gratuitousness if you lend something to those who can repay you? Even sinners do this.” Jesus concluded: "Love your enemies. Do good and lend without expecting anything in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.”
This is the reward; your love will be in perfect harmony with the love of the heavenly Father. Jesus made a proposition that conflicts with our distinctive impulse: to think of ourselves and the advantages we can gain from everything we do. Now Jesus is setting out again because he must get to Jerusalem, which is his goal, and that's why we ask ourselves, after what he has proposed to those who want to follow him, will there be many or few who will have the courage to follow him? The most reasonable answer seems to be, 'There will be very few who will go after him.'
Let's listen instead to what happens.
"Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them.”
To see great multitudes following Jesus after what he said can only surprise us and lead us to the conclusion that they follow him because they do not understand where he is going; there has been a misunderstanding. Perhaps they cultivate dreams and hopes and expect from Jesus what he never promised. When we remember the great crowds that filled our churches until a few decades ago, we think that perhaps there was also some misunderstanding there.
People were expecting what Jesus did not promise: favors, protection against misfortunes, healing, success in life, special graces as a reward that God grants to his faithful servants, and even miracles. Why are these multitudes diminishing today? Remember that before, those who did not go to church were pointed at the finger; today, it is the opposite. The answer that seems to us more convenient is to put all the blame on hedonism and secularism. Some have left and are leaving because they have understood the proposal of Jesus, and they are frightened because they consider it too demanding; they prefer to adapt themselves to the criteria of this world, saying, 'Why do I have to sacrifice myself for others when I can do what everybody else does, that is, pursue my interest and try to do what I like to do.'
But do they only leave because they have understood what Jesus is asking for? Or are we sure that we have proclaimed the gospel clearly and faithfully? Is it not the case that we must review many pastoral options to be in tune with the gospel? As we have heard, 'Jesus turned’ because he wanted to see these crowds in the face because, like us, he was certainly amazed that so many people were willing to follow him.
Today, he turned and looked at the faces of each of us to see if we understood what he was proposing. He is not concerned with numbers; he is a lover who offers life and says, 'Do you want to unite your life to mine? I give my whole life; do you want to give it to me? This is my proposal.' This is to avoid misunderstanding and give our adhesion while cultivating illusions and false expectations.
Let us listen to what he says to the multitudes that follow him:
“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.”
Jesus knows that the multitudes accompanying him have not given him their adherence; in fact, the evangelist Luke does not say that they were following Jesus, but that they were going to him; the verb 'to follow' indicates the choice to become disciples in the gospels. Not here, it says that they went towards him, that is, they were attracted to him, they felt a particular interest, a certain sympathy, and this is understood because Jesus is a beautiful person. It is impossible to remain indifferent when you meet him. However, Jesus wants people to go beyond this initial attraction.
Also, today, many people go to Jesus, who are attracted by the gospel, his person, and what is moving around him in the Christian community. One can come to him for many reasons, and this is a beautiful thing, even if the motivation is not always very exact; one can turn into a saint to obtain some grace, or to have a devotion to some relic, or you can go to the parish because you like the choir... Whatever the reason, it's a good thing to go to Jesus. It can be a bit of a superficial, fleeting motivation, sometimes not quite right and sometimes bordering on credulity; it doesn't hurt.
Going to Jesus is a good thing, but then one should not stop at this first contact; after all, not even the apostles were attracted to Jesus because they understood that they had to follow him and give their lives; they expected something else, but the beauty of Jesus' person attracted them. However, after coming to him, one must go further to understand what he proposes; Jesus is a very demanding lover.
We will now hear three requests that he makes, which Luke presents with very harsh expressions because he doesn't want us to confuse the choice to follow him with a particular passing enthusiasm. Jesus is not satisfied with temporary loves like those described, in a very effective way, by the prophet Hosea, who uses this image and says: 'Your love, O Israelites, is like a little morning cloud, like the dew, which, when the first ray of sunshine comes, vanishes immediately.'
The clarity with which Jesus makes his proposal is relevant today; we live in a society where a mentality does not encourage final, irreversible, or courageous choices. Affective choices, for example, are provisional; they go ahead while they last; if they are not gratifying, you change, then you change again, and one wonders why I should commit myself to building a family when everything is so random. This mentality of our world today is precisely the opposite of what Jesus demands from those who want to be with him, which is why it is obvious.
This is the first request we have just heard. We recall it: “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.” It is a provocative phrase, shocking, the kind of phrase that is so much needed today to shake the conscience of many Christians.
Unfortunately, not all preachers have the courage to resort to these phrases, perhaps because they fear they will run out of parishioners... No, the churches are empty, too, because they do not dare to present the gospel in its harshness when necessary. Sometimes, they smile at what they think is the Christian proposal, but when they hear the actual proposal that Jesus of Nazareth makes, people may say, 'I don't want to accept it,’ but they cannot say that it is not serious. Here is the importance of employing specific phrases.
Luke proposed this first request that Jesus makes with a deliberately scandalous expression. He does not say, like Matthew, 'love father and mother more than me,’ but he says 'hate' father, mother, and mother, and also to hate life. The verb is μισεῖ - 'misei' in Greek; 'sané` in Hebrew, it is the verb 'to hate.' What does it mean? Let's go to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21, verse 15. We are in a society in which polygamy is contemplated, and the book of Deuteronomy says: "If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved”(literally 'hated' - it uses the verb 'sané'). It is related to inheritance, and the firstborn was that of the hated one. The second son and the other sons are those of the one loved, the favored one.
The Torah text reads: “He may not consider as his firstborn the son of the wife he loves, in preference to the son of the wife he does not love, the firstborn.” You must give it to the son of the hated because he is the firstborn, even if he is not the son of the favorite wife. But this verb 'to hate' doesn't mean that the husband hated her; it means that she has passed to the second place because another woman has entered and has become the beloved. The other is not hated; she is simply less loved.
What does Jesus mean by this expression referred to by Luke's provocative expression? Let's be clear; he does not say we must renounce the most beautiful affections and the most sacred bonds we know, like the family's. But what happens when a young man falls in love with a girl and decides to marry her? He does what the book of Genesis says: 'He leaves his father and his mother.' It is not that he no longer loves them or that his love diminishes, that he forgets them, that he disowns them, no.
He establishes a new relationship with them, a new love, a different love than he had before. Previously, he loved his parents as a child and as an adolescent; he decided everything depending on his parents; they were the ones who decided what time he should come home on Saturday night. When he gets married, his parents no longer have their former place; they take the second place not because they are not loved but because that is their place. The wife now occupies the first place; it is with her that the husband decides everything. He will consult with the parents for their opinion, but they will not condition him because now, the 'beloved,' the wife, is in the first place.
We know that serious problems often arise in the couple when the in-laws are not in place when there is not this detachment from father and mother. In my hometown, they say that the new couple must build the house so they do not see the smoke from the parents' or the in-laws' houses. Luke employs the verb 'hate' to say that the cutting should be clean, there should be no hesitation, and everything must be decided with him. He wants to be the sole reference for all life choices and does not accept that there are other lovers in between.
It is difficult for us to understand how strong and even conditional the bond with the Jewish family was at the time of Jesus. We know that the family was also called 'house,' 'the house of David,' because the house symbolized protection and security. When a Jewish family repudiated someone, he remained alone, without support, without protection, and he also lost the right to inheritance. The link with the family, from which it was necessary to make a detachment, indicates the tradition, what has always been done, which can be right or wrong, and what has always been believed.
It's very topical for us because certain practices learned from tradition, certain devotions, and specific ways of praying had their raison d'être in the past, their function. Still, when one encounters Christ and his gospel, everything else passes to a second plane. It must be questioned to see if it is in tune with the word of God. Jesus gave the example of this detachment with his family; let us remember that at 34, he left Nazareth, his mother, and his relatives, a town with a traditionalist mentality with which he later came into conflict. His family tried to take him back to Nazareth, but Jesus said there was a new family now: 'those who hear and do my word.'
The old natural family is not repudiated but must enter into this new family. And Jesus says it is necessary to hate even one's own life. Here the term 'ψυχὴν' - 'süjé' is used. This does not mean giving up one's life; 'süjé' is oneself, one's identity. Here, he is saying what Jesus said: that one must renounce the withdrawal into oneself and one's self-interest and, therefore, question one's choices that pushed us to think about our interests and what we like.
Let's listen now to the second condition:
“Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Carrying the cross is a metaphor that we all know very well because it enters the standard language to indicate the inevitable difficulties that we must face every day: illnesses, misunderstandings, and family problems, but in the gospel, the word 'cross' does not indicate life's small or big setbacks. And, much less, it indicates the suffering we must accept to offer to God, no. The cross image suggests the pinnacle of love, which is the willingness to put one's whole life at the disposal of one's brother, as Jesus did.
Carrying the cross means taking the weight that comes with this choice because you must consider that there will be consequences that are not always pleasant if you serve the one who has altered the rules of this world. To bear the cross means to be willing to do anything to remain faithful to the gospel.
For example, you may be faced with giving up success when you realize that you can only achieve it by compromising with your conscience; others less scrupulous will precede you, but you will be at peace with yourself because you have not betrayed the gospel. Heroic choices may be asked of you that you had not considered; in the face of a problematic pregnancy, you may be asked to put it on the back burner all your dreams and plans; choosing forgiveness and love for the enemy could make you look weak and unable to defend yourself, to take revenge; it may also mean that you are asked to accept the contempt of the society you live in because they may consider you a loser, a failure; it can also mean accepting to be mocked. When Jesus came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, he said that the child was asleep, 'she is not dead' because, for Jesus, death does not exist; they all laughed. Claiming today that you believe in life beyond this can lead to being laughed at.
The cross is all this, but let us pay attention; it is not about looking for suffering, although there is suffering that inevitably accompanies the choice to be faithful to the gospel. We must keep in mind that Jesus wants to make this very clear. And now, Jesus must make a third request, which is both demanding and shocking that he feels the need to introduce it with two short parables. Let us listen to them:
"Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether, with ten thousand troops, he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms while he is still far away.”
In the Palestinian fields, watchtowers were erected everywhere to protect the orchards and vineyards from thieves and to guard the working tools. They can still be seen everywhere today. Whoever travels through Samaria can see the remains of towers that date back even to the time of Jesus, but it is not these towers that Jesus refers to because they do not require great expense. What is the tower? It has a symbolic meaning; it is a construction that recalls the detachment of the earth and rising towards the sky.
Building a tower means wanting to stand out, be noticed, and show that one is superior to others and not on the level of ordinary mortals. There was a man who is the very emblem of this quest for glory in tower building: Herod the Great; he built them everywhere. Behind me, you see those of his palace in Jerusalem; three towers are described in detail by the historian Josephus Flavius: that of Mariamme, his favorite wife, then that of Phasael, the most beautiful of the three towers, named after Herod's brother. Josephus Flavius says that in beauty, it could compete with the lighthouse of Alexandria. This tower of Phasael was 45 meters high, and the lighthouse of Alexandria was more than twice as tall, but in beauty, it was not superior. Then, the third tower, the tower of Hippicus, was named after a friend of Herod's. The tower is an image of the pursuit of glory in this world.
The ideal of the Greek man is to obtain 'glory' - 'doxa.' There were two ways of attaining glory: performing heroic deeds, winning battles, and defeating enemies; making constructions to remember one's name for posterity, building towers, and naming cities. There were at least 30 'Caesareas' in the Roman Empire. Even Psalm 49 recalls the glory of those who named lands and cities.
Herod, who embodied the Greek ideal of glory-seeking, wanted to be glorious even in death; he built his tomb in the Herodion, in front of Jerusalem. This tomb was 25 meters high; it was an eight-story palace made of white marble so that it could be seen from the Mount of Olives. Who knows how often Jesus saw this glory quest, even when the person had died. The Bible employs the symbolic meaning of the tower. When men wanted to make a name for themselves, they built the tower in Babylon, which reached heaven. To be supermen, they want to replace even God. But how long do all these towers last? We need to become glorious, and Jesus also wanted to become glorious to receive the glory, but what is it about? He proposes his tower to rise, to be genuinely excellent.
All towers need an evaluation by a judge whose opinion is very important. In the third chapter of the Letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of this evaluation of the construction that may be done of silver, gold, and precious stones, but also of straw, and then comes the fire at the end that tests the building. Jesus has already said that to acquire glory in the tower he proposes, one does not have to ascend to the top but to descend to the base, to the bottom rung. It is not necessary to dominate but to serve; therefore, it is a glory opposite to that which becomes the ideal for a Greek man.
So, it is a matter of investing in the tower that Jesus proposes; you must think about it carefully. Jesus wants to make us understand this because he does not wish to do that after having started to build the tower he proposes; over the years, one regrets the time he has wasted on this construction and is disappointed.
So, says Jesus, before you start building the tower project, I propose that you sit down, reflect, and think it over. If you do not need to sit down and reflect, you have not understood what the tower project is putting in front of you. In a little while, when I tell you how much this tower costs, if you are not sitting down, you may feel weak, like when you receive certain bills; but before telling us the price, he tells us another parable, that of the king who must wage war, who must evaluate if he has the strength to win against this enemy.
You must fight in a war against two enemies; the first one is inside yourself; it is that impulse that leads you to forget your brother, to think about yourself, your benefit, and what you like; it is a struggle you must fight. Jesus says: evaluate your strengths well because you will have to fight even against an external enemy. After all, worldliness will continue to make its proposals and create many problems for you.
These two parables seem to be an invitation to renounce the Christian vocation, but Jesus does not want to discourage; he only wants to make clear that there are difficulties, so do not have illusions; you must fight. And now, the price of the product: if you don't want to spend it, you must settle for admiring it, as if it were window shopping—as we say in English, you go through the shop windows and admire the product, but then you don't want to spend... so you only buy it with your eyes. All these speeches that Jesus makes are to present now the third proposal. Let's listen to it:
“In the same way, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Jesus has delayed a little to mention the price. This is the last offer on the price of the tower: It costs everything you have. If you want to spend less, choose other towers. Are you looking for glory in stadiums, in sports, or do you want the glory of the great bank manager to whom all bow down, many secretaries, or the glory of someone who wants to show off all his wealth and then buys the 100-meter yacht and then everybody can admire you?
Jesus says, be careful because all these towers have a serious problem; they don't stand the wear and tear of time. In sports, your skill at 35 is no longer what it was at 20, and the applause begins to fade—the bank manager with so much glory that no one calls him anymore when he retires. The lavish yacht has its time, others appear, and nobody remembers you anymore. It is the wear and tear of time of these towers. Jesus offers you his. It costs you everything you have; you must even make war to build this tower.
Here is the second image: the war is against the attachment to possessions, the craving to have always more, the πλεονεξίας = 'pleonexias,' as Luke says in his gospel, the having always more; is a war that you must wage against this impulse that leads you to keep for yourself and not pay the price in which you are genuinely glorious—the tower of the one who loves, of the one who gives everything for love. Jesus's proposal is not for some but for anyone who wants to be his disciple. They must renounce the use of possessions thinking of themselves.
The possessions are all used for love. Jesus is not proposing renunciation for renunciation's sake; he is not asking you to renounce happiness, but he presents the true joy of the one who gives everything as he proposes to build love. And, in the end, you are genuinely glorious. It is the glory of Jesus who made himself the servant of all, who kept nothing for himself. It is the glory of God who gives everything and becomes man's servant; this is the true joy.
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.
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