Does Jesus really mean what he says?
In today's gospel passage Jesus tells his disciples that we should hate our father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, even his own life or we cannot be his disciple.
Later he tells his disciples that we should renounce all our possessions or we cannot be his disciple.
Wow!
Hate and renounce!
What gives?
Jesus tells his disciple that if we are going to do it then we need to be fully involved. If we are going to be witnesses to and for the Kingdom of God then we need to be ready to be consumed by and for the Kingdom we witness.
Only when we are consumed can we truly be that which "shine like lights in the world" as St. Paul exhorts the early Christian community in today's first reading.
Jesus in the gospel is helping us understand what it means to be zealous, to have zeal for the Kingdom.
We can't be lukewarm, our light can't burn some of the time. Complete and total consummation is required for discipleship to be fully realized and for the witness to be genuine.
In the book of Maccabees chapter 2, there is a story told of Mattathias who was full of Zeal.
The King at the time was demanding that all make sacrifices to the pagan gods. Mattathias was astounded by such decree. When one of the Jews approached the altar to profane himself and the Israelites with such an act of idolatry, Mattathias was consumed by Zeal and he sprang to action and killed the man before he could offer the sacrifice of sacrilege and tore down the false altar.
Then he fled to the mountains leaving behind all his possessions. Upon his death bed he says this, "arrogance and scorn have now grown strong; it is a time of disaster and violent anger. Therefore my sons, be zealous for the law and give your lives for the covenant of our fathers."
Jesus isn't asking us to kill anyone but in some sense he is asking us to be zealous for the law, that is to truly love God above all and our neighbor as ourself. We must let our love for God inform our love for others and not the other way around.
Too often have we compromised our love for God because we are afraid we might offend our neighbor. How tragic! How insulting to God!
Jesus is also asking us to give our lives for the covenant of our fathers. In deed, every time we gather around the altar we witness the covenant, we enter into the covenant by which Jesus sheds his blood, he renounces his possessions and he chooses to hate all so that he might love God truly and only then does he love us properly.
We are called to give our lives in the same manner. Ordered love is what we are called to be about so that our witness might be purified and our light might shine.
Pope Benedict on Monday in his homily exhorts us, "If God loved us freely and shows that love in Christ gift of himself, we too can make our lives a free gift for others."
This is what hate and renunciation is about. It isn't negative but rather positive. It is about making space in ourselves so that we might become the gift of properly order love to the world and thus we will be "blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life..."
As you let the word posses you, you will dart like sparks through the stubble of the world setting the world a blaze with zeal for the Lord.
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