COUNTING THE COSTS

 

COUNTING THE COSTS

 

Today’s Gospel begins with “Great crowds accompanied Jesus on His way.”  Sounds great! The problem is, these people followed Him without knowing  where He was going. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to His  passion and death on the cross. But they followed Him out of curiosity, or  to see more miracles. No wonder Jesus had to wake them up and say that to  follow Him means taking up one’s cross. Many have joined our Church, but  have not made a choice to walk with Jesus toward the cross. We want to avoid  the cross. We lament when crosses come our way. 

 

Jesus dares to speak openly about the sacrifices we have to make to follow  Him. Maybe our faith is weakening. Our Church is going through a crisis and  process of decline because we try to eliminate the word “sacrifice” from our  vocabulary. When a priest speaks about the cross, people don’t like him. They  want to hear jokes and gimmicks. No doubt, Jesus wants happy followers and  He is not pleased when we are in church and have the faces of gravediggers.  We are redeemed and headed for eternal life and happiness. But life is not a  joke. Jesus had to pass Golgotha first before reaping the fruit of Easter glory.  

 

One word of Jesus in Today’s Gospel surely shocks most readers—He  demands us to hate our loved ones. How can He say such things? Did He not  always preach that we must love each other? We have to understand that Jesus  speaks as usual with the colorful language of a Jew who does not compare  things but places them in opposition to each other. In the Old Testament, for  instance, we read that Jacob hated Lea for substituting during the wedding  night for his beloved Rachel whom he thought he had married that day. But  he had his first four children with Lea. Obviously, it was not a relationship of  hatred. It just says that he loved Rachel more than Lea. And what Jesus means  is that God is not in competition with our close relatives. He only states clearly  that God has to come first in our life. Does He? Fr. Rudy Horst, SVD

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 

How do you accept crosses in your life? Do you rebel and complain? Do you try to  see them as a means to mature and be with the Lord forever one day? 

 

Lord, help me not to balk at trials and difficulties in this life, for I know You are with me. Amen. 

 

Today, I pray for ___________________________________