Memorial of Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Every week is filled with several moments when I think to myself, "Man, if I were trying to be just a bit more like a disciple of Jesus, I think I wouldn't have done _____." This week, one of those moments was a morning when we were trying to get out the door, and I yelled at the kids, to try to hurry them. The response was immediate: my two and a half year old burst into tears because I was yelling; my five year old burst into tears because her sister was crying. So far from making it out the door faster, my yelling actually slowed us down and it wasn't a good atmosphere for the kids. And I just knew: I hadn't been a good disciple in that moment.
Today's scriptures remind us, thankfully, that being a disciple isn't a one-shot deal. It involves training. That's the word Jesus uses in today's gospel (Luke 6:39-42): disciples who are fully trained are like their master. The implication, of course, is that we too should seek to be like Jesus. (Which is also, not coincidentally, our parish's constant focus!) When I think of training, I think of how a football team trains - they practice over and over again; they get bored, but they still keep at it. Then they get to a game and discover all the places where their training failed, and they get right back up and get back to training to correct for those mistakes.
I think that's similar to the kind of training we Christians are called to practice. We are asked to try our best, keep training in all the things Jesus and his saints call us to do, figure out our mistakes and keep on training.
Saint John Chrysostom (fourth century), whose feast we observe today, wrote very practically about what that training might involve. He wrote about marriage (and tried to live what he wrote too!), for example, and how marriage involved learning to live with each other and love each other, day after day, over and over, despite failures and mistakes. That sort of daily life together was a training in being a disciple of Christ. He wrote about giving money to others and caring for the poor (which he also tried to live out): that too, involved a constant trying to be generous even and especially after we've failed. He described the need to rest in God, learning discipleship by learning how to pray and be silent, even and especially in moments when we least want to be quiet.
Saint John Chrysostom learned well from Jesus - and as a saint, we might say he is one of those who was trained well enough to be like Jesus. We, too, are called to participate in training - over and over. For Christians, of course, the reason why we can keep on training, again and again, is the knowledge that God's grace is with us and that God ultimately seeks to bring us home. Paul's letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 1-2, 12-14) focuses on that grace and how important it is to rely on grace even in the face of big mistakes like the ones Paul confesses to have made.
So in my own reflection on my mistakes in parenting this week, I prayed about it and tried to get right back into being a disciple. A couple days later, my kids came running up to me and wanted to play a game. Playing a game was the LAST thing on my mind. I was tired, hungry, tired, exhausted, and tired. I wanted the day to be over and I wanted to ignore their request. But I had discipleship on my mind and I thought - no, what my kids need right now is some love and attention. And so we went and played some games together.
Today, let us pray for grace to be disciples-in-training.
- Jana M. Bennett