The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are certainly very challenging: “If anyone comes to me and does not despise his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Then he adds: “If anyone does not carry his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.”
The Cost of Discipleship
These words of the Lord should not be understood literally; otherwise, they would be contradicting the law of love for neighbor and the fourth commandment. Jesus is rather enunciating to his disciples and those intending to follow him the cost of this discipleship. It is a forewarning about the challenges of the Christian path and the sacrifices that might be required of the disciples. Whoever that wants to be part of the Christian journey of faith should know beforehand how rough and tough the journey can be, so that one would properly consider his decision. This is the reason Jesus used the imagery of a person who intends to build a tower and a king who plans to make war against another king. According to Jesus, these persons must be adequately informed of the cost of their intended projects respectively and consider if they could afford them; otherwise, they might embarrass themselves as people who start projects without completing them.
Like the project of building a tower or going to war, the Christian life is a project, the project to love God as the highest Good and to remain consistently loyal to Him. This means that a follower of Christ must not regard anything as being of higher value than God. God should be loved “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Every other love must be collapsed into and flow from this primary love for God. The Lord presses home to his followers through this hard teaching that no filial love, and no earthly affection must ever come into competition with the love for God. He exhorts them to overcome all kinds of egoism and all false earthly considerations in their relationship with God. God must come first in the lives of those who truly serve him. This is what he demands of them, and this is the only way to serve him rightly. We have an example in the story of Abraham.
Abraham
After God blessed Abraham with Isaac, he possibly observed how much love, affection and attention Abraham was giving to this son of promise and decided to test the degree of his allegiance to Him. He, therefore, asked Abraham to offer him Isaac as a burnt offering. This is no doubt a tough process of clarifying who had the first place in Abraham’s life, his son, a gift from God, or God himself, the giver of all gifts. At the end, Abraham proved that his allegiance to God was absolute. He showed that he could not compromise his loyalty to God for anything, not even for his only heir. This is actually the act that gave him the appellation “father of faith”.
Thusly, one, who intends to follow the Lord, must carefully note what loving God as the highest good requires and carefully consider whether one can afford the cost of this project before embarking on this journey of faith. This is because following Christ does not admit of half measures, no standing on the fence, either that one is in or that one is out. This condition makes a demand on us, who are already involved in this project through baptism, to reevaluate our discipleship and identify where we must make improvements.
