Following Jesus may be something that we want to do with all of our hearts, but it’s not always easy, is it? Making sacrifices for our faith and truly following Jesus may seem to go against the values of our secular world. The things of the world may call out to us and tempt us. We may sympathize with the man who wants to bury his father. 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. It was difficult contacting me at our mission site out in the jungle where we had no telephone. The priests at our headquarters in the capital city had to contact me through a series of CB radios. Even though I got back to my dad’s funeral in California, which took several days, 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 went to my dad’s grave and put a wooden cross and some rosary beads there that I had brought back from Ecuador. Then, when I finished up at the seminary in Milwaukee, 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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