PaddlingPadre

At the beginning of this gospel, Jesus is surrounded by great crowds. Many had flocked to him because they had been healed by him or by his disciples, or else because they had been delivered from demons, and, some doubtless, because they were simply moved by his preaching, or else marveled at what they had seen him do for others, and thus hoped that he might be the messiah. In any case, all who followed Jesus as he preached and worked his miracles did so because they had in one way or another been attracted by him and by what he was doing, and so, having made this initial approach to Jesus, our Lord here turns to them and invites them to move from attraction to discipleship.

And this movement, this movement from hearing the word and considering it at a certain distance, with a mix of excitement, hope, and wonder, to the fullness of discipleship, with all the demands that come with discipleship, is a crucial moment. For one can appreciate Christ, perhaps, without being a Christian, but in the end one can only inherit the promises of Christ, one can only benefit from Christ, if one chooses to follow him. And so this invitation that Christ makes to the crowds, and indeed the invitation that he makes to each of us, to not merely hear his words, but to follow him, is an invitation that occasions two dangers.

The first danger is that one reject the invitation, that one refuse to become a disciple. The peril involved in such a rejection should, of course, be obvious. To reject Christ, to fail to follow him, is to remain dead in one’s sins, to remain apart from the God who in love created us for himself, and, in preference to him who is our ultimate good, to go after lesser, created things that can never bring us peace or happiness. When persisted in, this rejection of Christ’s offer of discipleship finds its fullness in the fires of hell, where God, respecting our choice for lesser goods, lets us have whatever pathetic thing it is that we have chosen to have in place of blessedness.

The second danger is in many ways like the first, though it is perhaps more insidious because it is more subtle, and that is that we accept Christ’s invitation to discipleship, or at least we think that we do, yet we do so in a manner that is but half-hearted. We might turn to God in moments of crisis, and we might offer a bit of prayer now and then. Or perhaps we write the occasional check, or go to mass when we feel up to it. And yet in all this we hold God, as it were, at arm’s length. Not for us is the radical holiness of the saints. God, after all (as we might easily tell ourselves) will certainly understand if he needs to take a back seat to, for instance, youth sports tournaments, or our vacation, or simply our need for a restful Sunday morning. And certainly, we might think, there is nothing dangerous in seeking to indulge ourselves in all manner of material comforts, such as entertainments and good and copious amounts of food and drink, for surely these are good things, and even a sign of God’s blessing. And indeed, perhaps they are, yet so easy is to be ensnared by such worldly living, that while thinking oneself a Christian, one can in fact live as a practical atheist, and, for such a one, can he or she truly be a disciple? Or, ultimately, will not both the one who rejects Christ’s invitation to discipleship as well as the one who embraces it half-heartedly come to hell in the end, for what else is a half-hearted embrace of the gospel if not a rejection? For to be in heaven is to be a saint, and there are no saints who love God half-heartedly.

Indeed, the only difference between the one who outright rejects Christ and the one who embraces the gospel half-heartedly is that the latter is more absurd, as our Lord indicates with his examples. It is an absurd thing to build half a tower because one couldn’t be bothered to plan for its completion, just as it would be vain and foolish for a king to recklessly and needlessly go into a battle that he cannot win, yet so it is for that poor soul who tries to half-way live a Christian life.

Rather, our response to Christ’s invitation must be a total commitment, as he himself warns us: 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. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Do not be distracted by this idiomatic usage of the word “hate”. St. Matthew gives us its proper interpretation, which is not less radical, when he says that any who love these things more than Christ are not worthy of him. For to be a disciple of Christ means to love him above all things, and even to sacrifice all that we have, embracing suffering and death even, if such be our cross, in imitation of him who for our sakes did not flinch from such torments.

We thus see, as Christ wants us to see, that there is a cost to our discipleship that we must be prepared to pay if we are to truly be disciples, and that that cost is, in a certain sense, very great, for to follow Christ will cost us everything that we have. And yet, having said this, how great a price can any mortal ever really pay? For we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Even what we seem to have will be lost to us in the end. Even what we cling to with all our strength is destined to slip from our fingers. Our span is a mere seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong, and these pass swiftly by and we are gone. And so what is it, really, for one who is under the doom of death to give everything he has? For nothing that we have is truly ours to keep, not even our very selves, which will soon become food for worms.

And so, from this broader perspective, how cheaply does Christ offer us a place in heaven! But surrender yourself fully, but give yourself entirely to his service for the span of the swiftly passing years of this life, and you will inherit eternal life and the glory of the resurrection! And so let us put away all half-heartedness, which avails us not at all, and instead may we count the cost and pay every last penny with joy, with obedience and with suffering, as the case may be, for it is only then that we will find true joy, for it is only then, once we have renounced everything for the sake of the kingdom, even our very lives, that our imitation of Christ will be complete, so that, united to God’s Son in a death like his, we might also be one with him in his resurrection.