Memorial of Saint Benedict, Abbot
In today’s gospel reading Jesus talks about what it means to be a disciple. He is instructing the apostles on what it means to follow Him before they head out to spread the Good News. And yet what Jesus says seems difficult to understand. Jesus says unless a person does certain things, he or she will not be “worthy” of Him. At first glance it seems as though someone has to be good and deserving of Jesus to follow Him, and yet this is certainly not what He preached or how He lived. I believe the worthiness that Jesus calls us to is a recognition of our great need for Him above all else. When we are able to believe in God’s great love for us, then we want to respond by loving God and His ways (even to the point of losing our lives). Our worthiness is not based on what we do, but on God’s grace and our ability to allow His grace to guide our lives.
In the gospel reading, Jesus tells His disciples that anyone who loves mother, father, son or daughter more than Him is not “worthy of me.” The word “worthy” seems to imply that in order for a person to receive Christ and His love a person needs to be deserving or good enough. When you look at the life of Jesus, this hardly seems to be the case, since it is usually the poor, weak, sinful and down trodden who are most likely to be recipients of Jesus and His loving grace. It seems that the worthiness that Jesus is talking about is more about recognizing our great need for Him in our lives. The openness and surrender to His presence allows us to see HIS worth and thereby place our trust and faith in Him. When we become worthy (open and desiring) of God in our lives, we can then receive all that He wants to shower upon us. Jesus tells His disciples that those who are willing to welcome Him will receive His Father and all the blessings that God wants to pour out on us. The worthy are the ones who recognize that our value does not come from things, people, or circumstances, but from the truth that God loves us and because of that we are children of God. If we can believe this truth, accept what it means to be a child of God, and live as child of God, then we are truly worthy disciples!
When reading this scripture, it makes me wonder if I can even begin to do the things that Jesus describes. To think that Jesus would ask us to love Him above mother, father, son and daughter seems like a great challenge. And yet, is Jesus asking us to allow His love to be first, so we can love mother, father, son and daughter with an even deeper and abundant love- His love? If we can openly and completely allow Christ into our lives (our thoughts, decisions, words and actions) then we may perceive this as “losing ourselves”, but in fact we gain the grace and love of God to control all we do. This does not mean that our lives will be without pain or hardship, but this surrender means we have God with us through it all.
The challenge to being a worthy disciple is allowing God into our lives. Through prayer we can open our hearts and minds to him. Through scripture we can learn about His ways, so we know how we are called to live. Through the sacraments, we are given the grace to live our lives as His disciples. But probably the most difficult and yet most important part of being a disciple is surrendering our will to God’s will. We may “lose” ourselves by placing Christ at our center, but as Jesus tells us, this is how we gain true life.
"Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus who not only comes to reveal Your love to us, but shows us how to live. May we recognize our complete dependence on you, and surrender to the grace of Your Spirit in our lives. May all that we think, do and say be a reflection of Your love and thereby give you glory. We pray this through Christ, our LORD. Amen."
- Marylynn Herchline