Just a few hours ago, at the Vatican in Rome, Mother Teresa was canonized. Mother Teresa is now a saint! It was amazing. I was able to see some of the pictures and video. She was honored, not only by having all of her Missionaries of Charity there, but also all the homeless from all over the Vatican were brought there. They came from all over the entire city and the country of Italy. The homeless were brought in by buses just so they could be there. After they arrived, they were all served pizza. All the local pizza shops brought pizza. Then all the nuns served the homeless pizza. I think it was a wonderful celebration for Mother Teresa. In honor of this day of her canonization, we are given this Gospel Reading which is so strong and powerful. She had a personality like that. She was strong and she was powerful. Even though she was a very small tiny person, she would take on anybody because of her love for God and her love for the poor. These are the two things I am going to speak about: the love for God, and also the renouncement of any possessions, giving of everything that we have.
Jesus uses these strong words in the Gospel. This is a Gospel that should punch us in the stomach when we hear it and think, “Wow! What does he mean by that?” This is the Jesus of love who tells us to love everyone and honor our mother and father. Here He says, “If anyone comes to Me without hating… HATING his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. That is a pretty strong word, right? I learned around my nieces, that I am not even allowed to say the word hate. That is a bad word! I guess it is now a four letter word. But Jesus says this without hating his father and mother, wife and sister, brother and children, and even his own self, for My kingdom, cannot be My disciple. He goes on, even stronger, “Whoever does not carry his own cross, and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
I was going through a lot of the scripture scholars and studying what this meant and why Jesus said this. Some of the more modern scholars would say, “You know he really didn’t mean hate.” The Greek had only one word for hate. Therefore, it could either be very strong or very subtle. This was probably a very subtle one. Jesus said that, “If anyone comes to Me without liking his mother or father, liking them less, he is not worthy.” I think that is a fine translation if you need that, if you cannot just wrestle with this heavy word that is a good translation. Unless you like your mother or father, husband or wife, or children less than Jesus, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
However, I think the translators kept the word hate in there for a reason. First of all, Jesus was trying to get their attention. Remember, there are crowds of people. Therefore, He screams out, “Unless you hate your mother and father, sister and brother, wife and children, and yourself, you cannot be my disciple.” This must have gotten their attention, right? Hopefully, it has gotten your attention, and my attention, too. Hopefully, we really wrestle with this. What does this mean? The reality is, and it comes down to the end, unless you renounce all of your possessions, you cannot be My disciple. Those possessions for us not only include the material things, but also people in our lives. We ultimately cannot cling to any person, to anyone, to anything, above our clinging to God. God has to be first and foremost in our lives. That is the first point I want to make. That when Jesus says hate, He is saying if anyone gets in the way of God being first in our life, we should hate that person. We should hate that situation. We should not tolerate that situation.
We all know Mother Teresa was known for was serving the poor, but even bigger than that, was her prayer. Mother Teresa spent an hour of Adoration every morning. She actually did two hours every morning before she did service. She would get up early and the first thing that she did in her day was pray. She put God first, even above the poor. The reality is, for all of us, sometimes people will try to get in our way of loving God. I think for Mother Teresa, she did leave her mother and father. She left them behind and served the poor. Jesus honored His father and mother. I cannot imagine Mary and Joseph were thrilled when at 30 years old, Jesus said, “Hey by the way mom and dad, I am going to leave for a few years and just go gallivanting around the countryside and you are going to have to take care of all the work at home.” He put God first in His life.
Sometimes we might feel a duty to our parents that comes above God. At those times, it is really painful that we do have to choose God first. I will give you an example. I just met a man who came from India. He had a conversion. He was Hindu. He had a conversion to Christianity. He came to know Christ. He was thinking about the Catholic Faith now. When he had that experience, his family completely rejected him. They really put a “guilt trip” on him because he was leaving his family and following Christ. This caused tension in his family. As I was talking to him I realized it was okay. It is better for him to follow Christ even though it causes tension in the family.
I think about husbands and wives. Sometimes it will cause tension in a family when one spouse is more dedicated to God than the other. I was taking an Uber ride the other day, and I was talking to the driver. I was wearing my collar. He was married for a year. I asked him how was married life. I asked him to tell me his high and low points in marriage. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and said “Father, it has all been a low.” I said, “What?!” There was somebody else in the car with us, so I did not want to get into it. I said to the unmarried girl next to me, “Well you know, sometimes in marriage there are stressors.” The top three stressors are usually: finances, faith/religion, and children – sex and children. Those are usually the top three stressors. I was telling her marriage can be stressful. She got out of the car and the driver looked at me in the mirror and said, “Father it was all three of those.” We talked about it. We talked about each one and how the division is hard because you he wanted to practice his faith and his wife did not. He was very serious about the faith, and his wife was pulling away from it. She was actually resentful any time he would go to church or go to Mass. That is one of the cases where God has to be first. Sometimes it is true for women. Sometimes the women will be very dedicated and even my parents at home are sometimes. My mother loves to go to Adoration on Sunday night and it will drive my father nuts because she will leave the family Sunday night at nine. He says “Why don’t you just stay here with the family.” But she is loving God first. I always thought that was a great example. Children. I think right now and this is probably the biggest idolatry we have right now is wanting to give our kids everything. Thinking our kids need every experience in life. I think about this especially with sports. Sometimes people will say to me very honestly and candidly, “Father, we just could not make it to Mass this weekend. You know we had traveling volleyball. We had three volleyball games all over the state. We had soccer practice, and they go on and on about all this stuff. I want to say, “So what?” God has to be first in your life. Even if your kids hate you because they have to miss an event or a tournament or whatever, bring them to Mass. God has to be first. Sometimes children will hate their parents for this. Sometimes kids do not want to go to Mass. Sometimes they do not want to go to church. Sometimes they do not want the good things that they need. And that’s okay. It is going to cause tension at times.
Then He says our very own self – so that means there I going to be things in our life that we are going to be tempted to put first before God. I think the ultimate “litmus test” is the Sunday Mass. The Sunday Eucharist is the source and summit of our life. If we miss Mass, for any reason on Sunday – the church gives us two dispensations to miss Mass – do you know what they are? Sick, ok so if you are ill you don’t need to come to Mass. Please don’t come to Mass if you’re sick. Spare me. Spare all of us. The second one is pregnancy. If you’ are pregnant, or if you have a newborn child, you do not have to come to Mass. If you are not pregnant, you have to come to Mass. These are the only two dispensations that we are given. But look at all the other things that sometimes fill that place and we say, “Oh I have this going on and I cannot make it to Mass this week. Even when I am on vacation and I don’t want to go to Mass this weekend. If we ever miss Mass, we ultimately have made something else or someone else more important than God. We have made them an idol. Jesus would hate that we made someone or something else above His Father. We should hate if we put someone or something else above God our Father. Ultimately that is what brings us to the last line, “In the same way, I say to you, if anyone does not renounce all of his possessions cannot be my disciples.” If there is anything that gets in the way of God, we must renounce it. We must hate it. We must get rid of it. We must allow ourselves to put God first in our lives. The first “litmus test” is Sunday Mass. The celebration of Sunday Mass needs to be the source and summit of our faith. If there is anything that tempts us to get rid of it, we must renounce it.
I think the second is daily prayer. Mother Teresa’s nuns, The Missionaries of Charity, were required to make holy hours every day. Here is a great story:
There was a nun who said to Mother Teresa, “Mother, praying is really not my thing. I really just want to be with the poor. We cannot keep up with everything we are doing. Would you just let me out of my holy hour and serve the poor?” Guess what Mother Teresa said to her – you are not just doing one hour now, now you are doing two. She made her do two holy hours every day for the rest of her life. She did her two holy hours because Mother Teresa knew that even above serving the poor, prayer with God is most important. That is the second thing I would like to mention for you to think about. Think about your daily prayer life. Do you pray every single day? Do you put time aside for prayer?
In this Gospel, Jesus is telling us to make a plan. If you are going to lay a foundation, make sure you have the resources, make sure you have the money. If you are going to go to war, make sure that you are going to be able to win the war. Every day is like a war for us. The enemy is fighting against us, trying to keep us away from God. We have to put firmly a place for God in our day. I just ask you that question, do you do that? Is there a time every single day than come hell or high water you are going to make God first. The Saints, the Mystics, and Mother Teresa called this a Holy Hour. Mother Teresa and her nuns did a Holy Hour. Many priests and religious do a Holy Hour. All Lay people are encouraged to do a Holy Hour. Maybe you cannot do a whole hour. Just start off with anything – 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or 20 minutes. Get into that rhythm of daily putting God somewhere in your day and first in your day. If anything tries to get you away from that Holy hour, renounce it because God ultimately must be first in our lives. Today we celebrate this wonderful celebration of a great saint, and Saint Mother Teresa. She showed us what it was to love God with all of our heart, and sometimes that meant going really hard and strong against people. She not only loved the poor, but was able to renounce any possessions as well, to be able to truly serve them and to be with them.
That is my hope for all of you. That you do actually walk away with a little bit of a punch in your stomach from the Gospel today. You know that it does shake you in some way, in me in some way, it has me, to realize that God needs to be Number One in our lives. We have to be “all in” with God. We cannot hold anything back – any person or any thing. If you feel like anything has kept you away from God, or kept you away from the Sacraments, or kept you away from your daily prayer, maybe right now is your time to recommit. To make that plan. To build your life around God. To make the Sunday Eucharist the summit of your life. To make daily prayer the most important thing in your day, and to ultimately commit your life to God, so that you can be the disciple that He has called you to be.
