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Word To Life
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Sunday Scripture Readings: Sept. 9, 2007
By Dan Luby
Catholic News Service
September 9, Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Cycle C. Readings:
1) Wisdom 9:13-18b
Psalm 90:3-6, 12-17
2) Philemon 9-10, 12-17
3) Gospel: Luke 14:25-33
Hyperbole -- it's a 50-cent word for a figure of speech that most of us have used a million times. We express the intensity of our convictions, the importance of our insights or the urgency of our needs by extreme exaggeration. So we might say that a toothache is killing me or the freeway's a parking lot or the new baby is the most gorgeous child on the planet.
When Jesus tells us in Sunday's Gospel that we can't be his disciples without hating our family members, he is not contradicting his law of love. He is speaking in hyperbole to heighten the urgency of his insight: Commitment to Jesus must take priority over everything else -- even commitments as important and valuable as family -- if the love we share with others is to be authentic.
Make no mistake: This level of commitment is costly. Jesus likens it to carrying a cross. It's a cross that appears in many forms, depending on the circumstances of our lives. Yesterday it might have been shaped like the demands of raising children; today it may take the form of caring for failing parents; tomorrow the cross we bear could be the burdensome weight of an unpopular but necessary challenge to power.
The severity of this standard seems impossible to attain, and if hearing it rocks our confidence in our ability to change, that's not a bad thing. Because the confidence which allows us to persist in the Christian life, which sustains us in the transformative but painful work of carrying the cross, does not reside in our strength of will. Our confidence rests on the sure and steady bedrock of Christ's love.
In spite of the jarring harshness of Jesus' hyperbole, it is communion with him that empowers us to truly love, not only our families and friends and strangers, but even our enemies.
QUESTIONS:
What do my actions in daily living suggest my priorities are? What's one specific way I might seek help in carrying my current cross more peacefully?
SCRIPTURE TO BE ILLUSTRATED:
"For the deliberations of mortals are timid. ... For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns" (Wisdom 9:14-15).
END
Copyright © 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS Word To Life column may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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