Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Saturday September 4, 2010

To Know Jesus is to Live Jesus

Today’s Gospel brought back memories of my days in the seminary in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains in Mahwah. They were very different times, to be sure. As with those preparing for a commitment to monastic life, young men destined even for the ‘secular’ priesthood were expected to live apart from the world in a quasi-monastic setting.

The seminary was often referred to as a spiritual ‘boot camp.’ Some cynics called it ‘Alcatraz!’ No food allowed in the room; no carpets on the floor, no secular pictures or even family photos on the wall. Contact with family and friends was limited to what we now call ‘snail mail.’ Phone calls were permitted for emergencies only and never without explicit permission. There were no weekly visits from parents, sisters and brothers or ‘outsiders’ of any kind and our only trip beyond the seminary gates was a walk to the cemetery on All Souls Day and a ride to the voting polls on election day. Newspapers or secular magazines were the property of professors who sometimes left them in a disposal container at the end of the hall where we would snatch them up for a clandestine peek.

The daily schedule was clearly defined; nothing left to chance or choice. We were being trained to “love God with all our minds and hearts and souls and our neighbor as ourselves” though our neighbors were limited to our fellow students and instructors, the latter making it very difficult at times to love them.

This may all sound quirky to you and I can assure you it does to me as well in hindsight. But believe it or not, they were to a great extent, carefree days. There was security in that axiom, “You keep the rule, and the rule will keep you!” But is this wisdom or naivete? Perhaps they were happy because we were happily ignorant of the world around us. This type of detachment from reality was not healthy.

There is no doubt that the seminary lifestyle was intended to prepare us to live in the world as true disciples of Christ — the same Christ that we meet in the Gospel. Perhaps seminary discipline was based on a literal interpretation of today’s text from Luke which is even stronger than Matthew’s narration of the same teaching: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

The difficulty is not that you and I reject the literal meaning of this text; we certainly do! The problem is that we are tempted to cast it aside as having no application whatever to our lives and our life-style. Was it Mahatmas Ghandi who said, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it’s just that it has never been tried.” As the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel, it is an overstatement to be sure but not without merit or application. The line between exclusive love for Jesus and religious fanaticism is very thin. We live in an age of religious fanaticism. We find it among Christians and even among some Catholics who revel in rules and regulations and in the minutiae of rubrics and rituals while neglecting the rule of love. To love Jesus exclusively is to love others inclusively!

Just as one person cannot be “trained” to know and love another in preparation for marriage, so too the seminary could not “train” candidates to know and love Jesus in preparation for a life-long commitment to him and to his teachings. Couples fall in love; faith in Jesus is caught and love for him not learned from books but experienced through association. The disciples of Jesus journeyed with him. In fact, Luke’s portrayal of Jesus life is a journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem, in the course of which his disciples came to know him as ‘the way, the truth, and the life;” for them, the only way, the only truth, and the only life.

As in a healthy marriage, when the relationship is solid, we do whatever we need to do protect it, to nurture it, and to live it faithfully. We become preoccupied with the other and the other energizes us overtly and subliminally. So it is in our relationship with Jesus. We do whatever we need to do to remain faithful. Jesus becomes the center of our lives. In the words of the psalm hymn: “O Lord, you are the center of my life; I will always praise you, I will always serve you, I will always keep you in my sight.”

Indeed faith is caught not taught; love is experienced by hanging out with people who know Jesus and who love as Jesus loved.

A young boy was in the habit of coming home from school late. There was no good reason for his tardiness and no amount of discussion seemed to help. Finally in desperation the boy’s father sat down with him and said, “The next time you come home late from school you are going to be served bread and water for your supper — and nothing else. Is that clear, son?”

The boy looked straight into the father’s eyes and nodded. He understood perfectly. However, the next day he arrived home later than ever.

That night when they sat down together at table, the boy’s heart sank to his feet. His father’s plate was filled with food; likewise his mother’s plate. But the boy’s own plate contained only a single slice of bread. Next to his plate was a lonely glass of water.

The boy’s eyes stared first at the bread, then at the glass of water. This was the punishment his parents had warned him about. To make it worse, he was absolutely starving.

The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate and put it in front of the boy.

The boy understood what his father was doing. His father was taking upon himself the punishment that he, the boy, had brought upon himself by his own behavior. Years later, that same boy recalled the incident and said, “All my life I’ve known what God is like by seeing what my father did that night.”

This is in effect what Paul did for Onesimus, the slave of Philemon in ‘adopting’ him as his son and it is what God had done for us in Christ.

All our lives we may have been wondering what God is like and then we met Jesus.

The next step is for us to be for others what Jesus has been for us.

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