Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 7, 2025
Luke 14: 25-33
St. John the Evangelist, Columbia, Md.

The Sermon on Mount (Ivan Makarov)

Like your pastor and parochial vicar, I belong to a religious congregation.  I’ve been a Salesian of Don Bosco for 59 years.  As a member of our Eastern U.S. province, I’ve been assigned to works in Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and briefly in 2 foreign countries.  For only 2 years was I posted close to immediate family, when I was down the road in our Takoma Park community.

The geographical distance from my parents and siblings wasn’t because I hated them, to use the language of Jesus in today’s gospel (Luke 14:26).  Rather, I’ve answered Jesus’ vocational call to follow him even tho it’s meant a physical separation from family as well as friends I’ve made over those many years.

Jesus’ words today sound strong.  He’s using the language of his time and culture when he speaks of “hate” and “renouncing all one’s possessions” (14:33), exaggerating to emphasize his point.  His point is that the commitment of his disciples must be total.  Before you tell Jesus that you’ll be his follower, realize that it’ll have a cost you must reckon on, as a builder or a military leader must calculate (14:28-32).  The cost will include suffering, because when we follow Jesus, we’re following one who sacrificed his life on a cross (14:27) for the salvation of the human race.

When we look at the lives of the saints, we see that some of them had to make hard choices between Christ and other loyalties.  In our 2d reading we heard Paul writing from prison, “a prisoner for Christ Jesus” (Phlm 9), arrested because Christians gave greater allegiance to Jesus than to the Roman emperor.

At the beginning of the 4th century, teenager Agnes of Rome consecrated herself to Jesus and therefore rejected her pagan father’s plans for her marriage; he denounced her as a Christian to the Roman authorities—she didn’t hate her father, but it appears that he hated her for her faith—and she was put to death because of her love for Jesus.

When Thomas Aquinas wanted to join the Dominicans in mid-13th century, his family was so upset that they imprisoned him and tried various temptations to get him to give up his vocation.  Eventually, they gave in to his determination, and Thomas became not only a saint but the Church’s greatest theological teacher.

Meeting of Sir Thomas More with his daughter
after his sentence to death

Henry VIII demanded that all of England approve his putting aside his wife, remarrying, and breaking with the Pope.  Thomas More, statesman and scholar, the most famous man in the country, the “man for all seasons,” refused to approve.  More’s wife and children pleaded with him to yield to the king, but the holiness of marriage, the unity of the Church around the Pope, and Christ himself were more important to him.  And he was executed.

In our own time, since 2009 more than 125,000 Christians in Nigeria have been killed, and thousands of others driven from their homes, by jihadist terrorists because they’re faithful to Christ and won’t convert to Islam.

Does my relationship with our Lord Jesus outweigh all other relationships?  Are my other relationships integrated into my relationship with Jesus?  Is Jesus more important to me even than family, than political party, than my bank account, than my social standing, than Sunday sports?  He demands that of us.  In Christ, God has adopted us as his own children, our prayer this morning observed; in Christ is our “true freedom,” and thru him God wants to give us “an everlasting inheritance,” a share in Christ’s place in the kingdom of God.  That freedom, that inheritance, that place depends on our following Christ, no matter the cost.

Do you want to deepen your relationship with our Lord Jesus?  The 2 young saints whom Pope Leo has canonized today tell you how.  Both St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, fun-loving 24-year-old apostle of the poor in Turin, Italy, and St. Carlo Acutis, millennial teenager, computer whiz, lived intense Eucharistic lives.

Frassati (center) with friends

Pier Giorgio was from an influential, well-to-do family.  A daily communicant, he said, “Jesus pays me a visit every morning in holy Communion, and I return the visit in the meager way I know how, visiting the poor”—visiting them with both companionship and material assistance.[1]

Carlo “volunteered at a church-run soup kitchen, helped the poor in his neighborhood, assisted children struggling with their homework, played saxophone, soccer and videogames, and loved making videos with his dogs and cats.”[2]  He researched and posted to the internet accounts of 196 Eucharistic miracles.  Regarding his own devotion, he wrote, “The Eucharist is the highway to heaven.  When people sit in the sun, they get tan, but when they sit before Eucharistic Jesus, they become saints.”[3]

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[1] Michael R. Heinlein, “Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati: A Patron for World Youth Day.”

[2] Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service, May 23, 2024.

[3] Ibid.