Persevering in Discipleship with Jesus

The Call of Jesus to Discipleship

The word of God highlights the transitory nature of human life with its limitations and shortcomings. But, says the author, take courage; God gifts us with wisdom to help us discern what’s the right thing to do. Some of today’s so-called gurus and pundits seem to marginalize God. God’s word challenges us to anchor our lives in wisdom: to do the right and love goodness and walk humbly with God.

We also heard St. Paul, in a letter from prison, asking a slaveholder to welcome back a runaway slave as a brother in Christ. Now some may ask, why didn’t Paul specifically condemn slavery? Others, of course, argue that the society and times then were different. In any case, Paul sees the dignity of every human being and asks us, do we love others as brothers and sisters of Jesus?

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus challenges us to make discipleship our first priority. In the two parables here, Jesus cautions us not to naively rush into discipleship without gauging the cost. If discipleship with Jesus our priority, then all of our other relationships will thrive. God will bestow upon us the grace, power and energy of the Spirit, to persevere in a life of discipleship with Jesus, who is our way, our truth, and our life.

If we commit ourselves to worthy goals, if we persevere, we can achieve many good things.
We have many examples, religious as well as secular. I give you one: Mother Teresa of Calcutta whose feast day we celebrated last Thursday.

Mother Teresa is a model of perseverance in faithfulness to God, prayer, and love. She joined the Sisters of Loreto and began teaching in India. Seventeen years later, she felt the calling to work among the poorest of the poor. Eventually she studied the basics in nursing, and began to care for the poor, sick, and dying on the streets of Calcutta. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose numbers expanded to over 4,500 sisters in more than 600 missions in 133 countries today. There is also a male branch and an association of Lay Missionaries.

Mother Teresa showed us what holiness is: doing whatever our life's work is as best we can. Through a life of prayer despite her own “inner spiritual darkness,” and through a desire to meet people’s basic need for love, Mother Teresa taught us the priority of prayer and service in realizing one's true self as a son and daughter of God our Father.

There are many examples of perseverance in trying to do our life's work as best we can. In light of the Gospel theme, let us ask God to grace us with the energy and power of the Spirit to persevere in our life of discipleship with Jesus, to let the beatitudes in Matthew Chapter 5 be our spiritual guide so that we can indeed be grateful coheirs to the kingdom of God.

The Celestial Banquet

Jesus Christ Invites Us to the Banquet of Eternal life

Labor Day invites us to appreciate our work, and to recommit ourselves to doing our life’s work as best we can. That’s what holiness is about. God has committed some work to each one of us that He hasn’t committed to another. Yes, each one of us has a purpose. Aim to please God.

We’re also praying that God will keep safe those in the pathway of Hurricane Dorian.

The book of Sirach alerts us to be humble, dependent upon an all-good Creator. We are what we are by the grace of God. The good we do in life is the only thing that we will take with us to God in death.

The letter to the Hebrews contrasts two assemblies, one at Mount Sinai where God made a covenant with the Hebrews; and the other in the heavenly Jerusalem where countless creatures celebrate the new covenant or relationship God made with us through the bloody death and glorious resurrection of His son Jesus. Yes, God transformed us into his sons and daughters, coheirs to the kingdom of God. We are challenged to live a life worthy of that status.

In the Gospel, after watching how the so-called rich and famous proudly took places of honor at the table, Jesus told a parable, comparing the kingdom of God to a celestial banquet. All are welcome. But who will be seated at the table ? The humble, the people we may least expect to see.  The 20th century Catholic novelist Flannery O'Connor captures this parable powerfully in her short story "Revelation."

Jesus teaches us, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be…For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

The word “humility” derives from the Latin word humus, ground or soil, understood simply as down-to-earth, knowing who we are. Mary, Mother of God, showed humility in her song titled the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord … because the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Yes, Mary rejoiced in the gifts God bestowed upon her, and so too should we.

Pride is the opposite. Pride thinks “self”-sufficient. The book of Genesis gives us insight. God made us in His image and likeness. But we wanted to be number one. We overstepped our limits. The legendary Adam and Eve broke all their relationships, hid from Gdiscipleship, beatitudesod, blamed each other, and the land barely produced sustenance.

Hence, we are born into a broken world. That is the Catholic understanding of original sin, a phrase St. Augustine coined. The biblical characters mirror us trying to play God. Humility recognizes that we are absolutely dependent upon an all-good God. Luckily, God had the final word, and became one of us in Jesus of Nazareth.

There is no human solution to the brokenness in our world. There is a power beyond us – God -- that can heal this brokenness, and we can participate in that healing by doing good for others. This awesome, all-good, and transcendent power became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and is alive in our midst by the power of the Spirit. This same God invites us to live a life of discipleship with Jesus,  to reflect the beatitudes in our daily lives and to be generous with what we have so that one day we, gloriously alive with Jesus Christ can sit at the banquet of eternal life.
Amen.