My Dear People, 

In the gospel of Luke today Jesus tells us: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” That is a very dramatic expression. Why did Jesus use the word “hate”? It does not mean that we must hate our parents. Jesus was overemphasizing the importance of following him. It means to be detached from our loved one, even from our own interests if we truly want to follow Christ and be his disciples. What Jesus was emphasizing is that it is attachments that prevent us from becoming his disciples. One does not stop loving one’s family if he decides to follow Christ. However, if the ties of family oppose the call of Christ in one’s life, then one must be willing to break from one's family, so that he can be an instrument of Christ, and be able to go to where he is called to work for Christ, even if it means going to distant lands. 

Elsewhere, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for using loopholes in the law to justify not caring for their parents (Mark 7:11), and Paul rebukes Christians who do not care for their own family (1 Tim 5:8). So, we know that under ordinary circumstances, love for family is mandated (as in the Fourth commandment). 

Nonetheless, when there is a choice between honoring the family and following Jesus, one must choose Jesus. Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” 

This statement had a completely different effect on the people that Jesus spoke to at the time compared with us today. Then, the cross was an instrument of execution. It was an instrument of torture, like the electric chair, but much worse. The use of the cross was common during the Roman Empire, which liked to employ them to make an awful spectacle of the agonizing deaths (it took days) of anyone who opposed Roman authority. The Jews hated the cross because a curse was attached to anyone who died “on a tree” according to Deuteronomy 21:22-23). 

The condemned man carried his own cross to the site of his execution so “to carry one’s cross” means that you were on death row; there was no chance of appeal, and you would certainly die soon. Jesus says this in the Lukan “travel narrative”—that is, while he is on his “death march” to Jerusalem to experience his Passion (Luke 9:9). Jesus knew he was going to his death, and anyone who followed him also risked death. As it would turn out, everyone abandoned Jesus at the end, so he went to his cross alone. But in years afterwards, many of his disciples would share the Cross with him. 

Jesus' method of teaching is very different than many who teach the prosperity gospel, which is if you come to Jesus all your troubles will be solved. What Jesus is teaching is something different from this approach. Jesus is telling them that they do not realize what they are getting into. Following Jesus will cost everything that you own. If there is any possession you will not give up for the sake of Jesus, you will not have attained discipleship.

Can the renunciation of your material goods really be the way to salvation and communion with God? This seems paradoxical and difficult to accept. This is the wisdom that does not follow human logic, which defies natural reasoning. 

To see the wisdom and beauty of poverty and renunciation requires a gift of insight from God, a reception of his Spirit. 

Jesus now tells us that the path to salvation requires us to embrace death and renounce our family and material wealth in order to follow him. That is not the path of salvation we would have reasoned out for ourselves! But it is the wisdom of God which transcends our categories, the wisdom of God that we prayed to receive with Solomon the sage. 

Many even in the Church would have us believe that we can be saved without repenting of our sins, even that we can receive the Eucharist in good conscience without repenting of mortal sin. Don’t believe that lie. No one will enter heaven without acknowledging and renouncing every sin they have committed. This is the case because attachment to sin is attachment to that which is not-God and not-love. Therefore no one will be attached to sin in heaven.

If we do not repent of our sins, there is purgatory for those sins that are not mortal and hell for those who have truly rejected God and the kind of love he represents.

Yours in Christ, 

Fr. Vincent Clemente