Following
Jesus may be something that we want to do with all of our hearts, but it is not
always an easy thing to do, is it?
Making sacrifices for our faith and truly being loyal to Jesus may seem
to go against so many things in our secular world. There may be other worldly things that call
out to us. We may sympathize with the
man who wants to bury his father. I
remember that I was serving as a missionary in Ecuador when my dad passed away
in California. I was given a leave of
absence from my missionary work in order to attend my dad’s funeral and to be
with my siblings. However, I did not get
to go to Chicago to where my dad was buried until I came back from my missionary
assignment two years later. I remember
that I went to my dad’s grave and put a wooden cross and some rosary beads
there that I had brought back from my mission site in Ecuador. And I remember that when I finished up at the
seminary in Milwaukee in my studies for the priesthood, I stopped by the cemetery
in Chicago to say a prayer at my dad’s grave and to ask for his prayers for me
as I drove down to Mississippi to begin my life as a priest. Jesus tells the disciple that wants to bury
his father that he has a greater obligation – the obligation to proclaim the
reign of God’s kingdom. As I mentioned,
I think that we can all empathize and sympathize with that disciple.
We have to live out our faith in the
reality of our lives, in the reality of the different obligations we have in
life. We make sacrifices. We live out our calling to discipleship as
best as we can. It is not easy, that’s
for sure. We can tell from this reading
that Jesus wants us to be aware of what it really means to be his disciples. May we have the grace and the strength to
truly follow him.
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