Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 4, 2022 Cycle C

Fr. José Maria Cortes, F.S.C.B.
Pastor of the Church of St. Peter, North St. Paul, Minnesota

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Sunday Reading Meditations

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that there are three conditions for being his disciple: to “hate” family, carry the cross and renounce our possessions. What does he actually mean?  As today’s first reading says, “[w]ho can conceive what the Lord intends?” (Wis 9:13). Jesus brought the world a different way of relating to people and things.

Hating one’s relatives is a Jewish idiom that uses hyperbole to indicate preference.

Thus, disciples should love Jesus more than they love their families and, indeed, more than their own lives.  However, they must, of course, love their families. The fourth commandment is “Honor your father and mother.”  Jesus also commands his disciples to love themselves and their neighbors: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:31)

Nobody else can occupy God’s place in our hearts.  We have a thirst that only God can quench.  As today’s communion antiphon says, “[...] so my soul is yearning for you, my God; my soul is thirsting for God, the living God” (Ps 42:2–3).  In the responsorial psalm, we pray: “Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days” (90:14).

To prefer Christ to our loved ones is not to reject them; it is the right way of loving them.  In today’s second reading, St. Paul says to Philemon that the temporary separation from his beloved servant Onesimus was a way of having him forever: “Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever” (Phmn 1:15).

The second condition is that a disciple must carry his cross and follow Jesus.  Taking the cross means offering everything to the Father and acknowledging that all things belong to Christ.

Jesus continues with the third condition of discipleship.  A disciple is prepared to renounce all his possessions, not in order to lose them but to receive even more. As St. Paul says, “[...] for everything belongs to you [...] all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God” (1 Cor 3:23).  In Christ, we enter into a mysterious possession of all things.

When we give everything to God, whatever we love and have, we receive it back many times over.  By surrendering everything to Christ, we love and possess more.

May we strive to become faithful disciples of Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Amen.