23d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sept.
6, 1998
Luke
14: 25-33
“Will
he not first sit down and calculate the outlay?” (Lk 14: 28).
One
of the many images that has stuck with me from my months on Grand Bahama[1] is
the unfinished cement-block house: the
walls halfway up or even all the way up, no floor poured, scrub brush starting
to sprout within. Every time I saw
one—and there were many—I thought of today’s parable about building.
Bro.
Andy, I’m sure, can appreciate its architectural angle. Before he draws up plans, he wants to know
what’s budgeted for the project. (Or he
tells the provincial what the project will cost, and the provincial tells the
treasurer to find the money.)
We’ve
all seen happens in the province when we don’t calculate our outlays and our
income honestly and realistically.
Secular history provides plenty of examples of leaders who miscalculated
their abilities to win a battle or a war, e.g., Hitler’s invasion of Russia or
our efforts in Vietnam.
Jesus
uses these 2 little parables to illustrate his main point. Before becoming his disciples, we ought to
calculate what it will cost us and whether we’re willing to pay the price,
whether we have the strength.
In
1939 a young Lutheran pastor and scholar from Germany, previously a student at
Union Theological Seminary in New York, was on a speaking tour in America. He had already been speaking out against the
Nazis, and in 1937 published a book called The
Cost of Discipleship. With war
imminent he decided to cut short his tour and return home, to the consternation
of his New York friends. He had to take
a stand in Germany as an authentic disciple rather than remain here
safely. Before the war was over,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed.
He took his discipleship and its price absolutely seriously.
When
Thomas Aquinas wanted to become a Dominican, his family tried every means
available, including imprisonment and gross temptation, to turn him away from
his vocation. Many another saint, like
Francis of Assisi, has been disowned by his family for becoming a religious or,
like Elizabeth Seton, for becoming a Catholic.
Such
choices lay very much before the people of the 1st century, the people for whom
Luke undertook to write down in an orderly sequence whatever Jesus had done and
taught (cf. 1:1-4). Both pagans and Jews
who accepted the Gospel risked being cast out by their parents and
families. “If anyone comes to me without
turning his back on his father and mother, his wife and his children, his brothers
and sisters …, he cannot be my follower” (14:26).
Every
Christian knew how Christ had borne his cross and been nailed to it. Many of the faithful must have witnessed
criminals on their way thru the streets or along the roads to execution. All of them knew they risked being imprisoned
and put to death if the emperor put out an anti-Christian decree or if some
wave of hysteria caught up the community where they lived. “Anyone who does not take up his cross and
follow me cannot be my disciple” (14:27).
Jesus
speaks to you and me, brothers, on 2 levels.
He addresses us as disciples, as his followers who have been baptized
and confirmed, who commune with his Body and Blood. He addresses us also as religious, men who
have turned our discipleship into a profession.
As
disciples today we don’t have to turn our backs on our parents and relatives,
and gone are the days when Don Bosco would caution us against returning to our
families and native places lest our vocations or even our salvation be
imperiled.[2] But the point remains: Is Jesus the 1st person in our lives? Is there any personal attachment that
distracts us from following him wholeheartedly?
any person or family more important to us than Christ’s Church and the
Salesian Society? any office or habit or
object of which we are so possessive that it impedes our discipleship or our
practice of obedience, chastity, or poverty?
Jesus
tells us that we must turn our backs on our very selves in order to follow
him. How often the practice of Christian
charity or fraternal love for a confrere requires that we swallow our pride,
submit our opinions to the judgment of another, lay aside our own convenience
to serve someone! Persecution is no
longer the order of the day for Christ’s followers in most parts of the
world. But, as the Introduction to the
Constitutions used to say, “the merit of one who takes the vows is equal to
that of one who undergoes martyrdom, because what the vows lack in intensity is
made up by duration.”[3] I think the same is true of day-to-day
self-denial, trying daily to put aside our own egoism and desire for comfort in
order to live with and love one another.
We
admire a confrere who assists someone who is sick or who gives his time or
energy to perform some community service or who spends himself tirelessly for
young people. This is not because we
admire philanthropy but because we see the confrere carrying the cross with
Jesus. Someone who’s never satisfied
with the food or the furnishings or the fraternity displeases us because he
doesn’t know how to deny himself.
So
each of us needs from time to time to remember what our Baptism means and why
we signed up with Don Bosco. We can add
up the outlay and recalculate the odds of victory. The cost hasn’t changed in 25 or 50 years;
but now it’s real and not theoretical.
The odds of victory haven’t changed either. Jesus is still our Risen Savior, and Don
Bosco still promises us bread, work, and paradise.
[2]
See, e.g., BM 12:7, 259; cf. “Introduction to the Constitutions (1957), pp.
12-15.
[3]
Ibid., p. 24.
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