Jesus Challenges You
To Come Follow Him

Homily 09 08 2013
23rd Sunday OT - C

View the Readings for this day

Each Fall, a lot of young boys aspire to become football players. But only a few will find their way onto the high school or university teams.

Every year a coach challenges the hopefuls, explaining the cost involved: "Your muscles will ache from calisthenics. We'll run you till you think you can run no more. We will drill you and drill you, then drill you again, every day, after school. There'll be no drugs, no alcohol. Only if you work hard will you make the team. If you don't, you won't."

The personal, economic, and emotional cost of becoming an Olympic or professional athlete is still higher. Young children spend hours a day practicing their skills and submitting themselves to rigorous programs of diet and exercise to become great gymnasts or dancers.

Others accept the cost of dedicating years to study and hard work to become outstanding doctors or lawyers or scientists or writers.

In today's gospel, Jesus challenges his would-be followers to calculate the cost in following him, because they will have to leave their families and possessions and accept the pain and suffering involved in following him as true disciples.

A French Painter by the name of Renoir in later life had his hands crippled by arthritis but he painted every day and when his fingers no longer were supple enough to hold the brush correctly he had his wife attach the paintbrush to his hand in order to continue his work.

Often he painted with excruciating pain with each colorful stroke but he said that the beauty always remains but the pain passes. He painted until he died because he had such passion. There was a cost for him, but most would say it was worth it.

Many of you will agree that the cost of being an Olympic athlete is also worth whatever is required to excel. We admire all the Olympians for what they do in preparation for the Olympics.

I remember the day I drove away from home leaving for the Seminary seeing the tears in the eyes of members of my family, and hugging each of them.

This is what I thought of in reading about leaving family behind as I prepared for the homily this weekend.

I believe Jesus asks us not to reject relationships in family, but rather to turn more and more to him. In making that decision for priesthood, I actually have always felt very close to my family. -

Jesus himself was a Wise Teacher, and he advised his disciples that following him would require that they be willing to accept the cost for the sake of the Kingdom.

In Luke's Gospel Jesus details some of the costs of discipleship: he invited his disciples to value their union with him above all other unions. He wanted his disciples to be sensitive, sensible, sane and sober and to understand the high personal price of being his followers.

William Barclay commenting on this text noted: It is one of the supreme handicaps of the church, that in it, there are so many distant followers of Jesus but so few real disciples.

The Holy Spirit invites us to consider our discipleship this weekend, to choose it, to look at it again, to renew it. Reflecting on the disciples, we look at our own baptism and discipleship.

In his book, the Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello tells the story of a villager who runs to the outskirts of the village in search of a certain Sannyasi.

In his dream, the Lord told him that upon finding this wise and holy man, the villager would be given a precious stone and be rich forever.

The Sannyasi rummaged through his bag and found the stone, which he gave gladly to the man. The villager gazed in wonder at perhaps the largest diamond in the world and left for home.

All through the night he was unable to sleep. Before dawn, he ran back to find the Sannyasi, saying, "Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give away this diamond so easily."

This is a lesson in letting go, of being disciples.

One who aspires to follow Jesus is blessed to be in his company. We are invited to let go of our own comfort and control and appreciate the cost of discipleship.

In family life, self-renunciation is practiced whenever the needs of others are placed first out of love...and in parish life also, it is necessary to unite our acts with the love of Christ and give witness to the Gospel.

So many of you accepted the cost of discipleship in our Annual Catholic Appeal this past spring. Next weekend we also are invited to give to the support of the Build Hope Campaign. We are asked often, it is part of being a disciple.

Jesus asked all who followed him to change their vision when they followed.

Do not try to build a new city if you are not willing to change!!!!

The gospel and epistle reminds us that all relationships are relative but we are invited to an even greater relationship between God and ourselves which is described in the Song of Songs.

Our relationship with God is maintained by our remembrances of a wonderful God with whom we continue to grow in intimacy.

God has gifted us with the Holy Spirit and with wisdom. WE are invited to persevere as followers of Jesus.. As we gather, we can be grateful for the call to be followers of Jesus and we pray for God's help to renew our discipleship.

There's a poem written and posted on a wall in Calcutta India run by Mother Teresa's sisters. It originally had a title: Anyway; Never Give UP.

Discipleship is an unusual under taking The better you become at it, the more difficult and challenging it will be. Be a disciple anyway, never give up!

The people you are called to serve may be unlikable, ungrateful and unimpressed by your dedication.

Love and serve them anyway; never give up! The good you do for Christ will be forgotten tomorrow; Do good anyway; never give up!

jjl

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