Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, (Year C)

Peace be with you on this, our celebration of the Mass for the 23 ^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. You know, as I initially began to meditate on this Gospel today I thought, “whoa, hate father and mother, wife and children, are you kidding me? What can I say about such extreme words from Jesus that sound so ugly and threatening?” I don’t know about you but when I was raising my own children and heard any of them use the word “hate”, especially when talking about their feelings for other people, I would cringe. It would often generate one of those, “Oh Dad!” type conversations. Hatred is just such a strong and negative emotion.

Is this really what Jesus meant in today’s Gospel? Well, in the context of our own modern English language, the short answer is no. In context of Jesus’ 1 ^st Century Jewish audience his use of the word hate would have referred to love versus a strong preferential love. His Jewish listeners would have probably reflected on Genesis where it says God loved Jacob and hated Esau. In that context God loved them both but his strong preferential love was given to Jacob. Perhaps the way Matthew wrote about this same event in his Gospel at 10:37 might seem a little more acceptable to our 21 ^st Century sensitivities where Jesus says; “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.”

There is a phrase from today’s Gospel that would have completely shocked to Jesus’ 1 ^st Century audience however, when he said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Today we easily think of the loving spiritual message offered by the symbol of the cross but in 1 ^st Century Israel it represented brutal torture, cruelty, death, and perhaps most difficult to comprehend, absolute and complete public humiliation.

So what is going on here in these nine short verses from Luke? Where are those words of love, mercy, and forgiveness we’re used to hearing from Jesus? I think the answer comes in the very first verse when Luke tells us, “Great crowds were traveling with Jesus.” It sounds like Jesus was rapidly becoming the ancient equivalent of a modern rock-star. It probably deserves some serious contemplation on our part right here to think about these great crowds in this scene – compared to the few disciples at the foot of the cross during Jesus’ Passion and death. And while we’re contemplating those two scenes, enthusiastic crowds versus his passion on the cross, we probably should do a little soul searching ourselves.

In these nine verses Jesus uses the phase “my disciple” three times and each time he ties it to what our modern secular culture might call negative motivators; suppress love of family, take up your cross, and set aside possessions. If Jesus were a modern rock-star and used language like this to encourage album and t-shirt sales his manager would go crazy. This is the whole point to this reading though. Jesus is not trying to sell earthly popularity, merchandise, or entertainment. He has turned to this huge crowd and told them this whole discipleship thing is not going to be easy and it probably will be painful. He was trying to make it very clear to his listeners 2000 years ago and the reading is sending exactly the same message to us today, just being a fan of Jesus isn’t good enough. We always have to ask ourselves, “Am I a true follower of Jesus Christ or just one of his fans?” And perhaps one of the best times to ask this question is when we leave Mass today.

In his book “Theology for Beginners”, Frank Sheed says this, “To see ourselves merely as spectators at Mass is to miss the opportunity to take our part in the highest action done on earth.” The highest action done on earth, wow! You see my friends, in the Mass Jesus has given us the perfect form of worshiping God and that is exactly why we are supposed to be here today – giving worship to God,,, not to be entertained. And of course the pinnacle of our worship is the intimate and personal reception of Jesus himself in the Eucharist. If we walk out of Mass feeling board or disappointed because we just weren’t appropriately entertained, we just might want to think about that question; “am I a true follower of Jesus or just a fan?”

Today’s Gospel makes it perfectly clear; if we love God first everything else in our spiritual lives will fall into place. If however, we let love of something or someone else in this physical world move ahead of God, our spiritual lives will never be right.

You know last Thursday, Sep 5 ^th was the Feast Day of St. Teresa of Calcutta, or simply called Mother Teresa. I can’t imagine anyone in my own lifetime who most clearly defines being a true follower of Christ. She chose to live in one of the most horrible places on earth to bring Jesus to societies’ most despicable people. She called them all, “Jesus in disguise.” And I’m not sure if you’ve ever read any of her little books but she had an amazing gift for expressing profound wisdom using very few words. Personally, I’ve always liked to call her the little Saint of one-liners. One of my own favorites that perhaps also helps sum up her own life was this; “I know God will never give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and in keeping with her gift for wisdom expressed with few words, as she stood there on the world’s great stage with everyone watching and listening, the moderator asked her what we can do to promote world peace. Instead of a speech, she answered with six simple words, “Go home and love your family.”

And finally, in all of her humility, I’m sure Mother Teresa never dreamed she would one day be canonized a saint yet she said this many years before her own death. “If I ever become a Saint – I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven – to light the light for those in darkness on earth.” So, whenever you feel a little darkness in your own life or you feel like that cross, you’re carrying is just too great, you have a special saint in Heaven ready to intercede for you. For myself however, I like to meditate on Mother Teresa just a little whenever I’m really challenged by that “fan or follower” question.

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Paul T. Keil, 18-19 July 2026 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Season A Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time. OK, some of you may remember I’ve said before, in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the whole Sermon on the Mount, but did you know Chapter 13, where we are today, is often called the Sermon of the Parables. In this single chapter Matthew strings together seven separate parables from Jesus. Today we just heard numbers two, three, and four. Last weekend we heard the first one with the Parable of the Sower and what happens to the seeds scattered in different places. Next weekend you’ll hear the final three parables from Chapter 13 so, be sure to come back. So, what is Jesus saying in these readings. Last week we heard the parable about seeds as an allegory for Jesus’s words falling on a path and being eaten by birds, falling on rocky ground and withering with no roots, falling into thorns and being choked by life’s anxieties, and falling on fertile soil to bear fruit. Today we have Jesus giving us another parable about planting seeds and again, just like last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him to explain the parable. And since He stops to explain both parables about planting, he just might be trying to emphasize something important here for his disciples, and for us. One thing is clear in these parables however, God’s Kingdom will always coexist in this physical world with forces opposing it, like the wheat and the weeds growing together. Now many religious people struggle with this condition. Some see it as predestination. A weed in the wheat field or a seed in the rocks must represent people predestined to go to hell. That’s what it literally says, right? Still others ask in frustration; this is God we’re talking about, why does God’s Kingdom have to struggle with opposing forces at all? Why doesn’t God just get rid of the evil? Well, our old friend, St Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about good and evil coexisting in our fallen world. He said sometimes the two are so tightly interwoven that you couldn’t have certain types of good without certain types of evil. For example, he said simply, “there would be no virtue of the martyr without the cruelty of the tyrant.” Friends, God delights in our freedom, our intelligence, and our cooperation when we freely make the decision to accept God’s love. Without free will we cannot choose to love. Jesus’ explanation of the wheat and weed parable certainly helps when he says; “The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels” and in the next verse he says; “The Son of Man will send his angels.” There is a very important take-away here every single Christian should remember. Eternal judgment belongs to God alone, not to anyone else – period. This is a consistent message Jesus gives us in all four Gospels but unfortunately, there are those who sometimes forget this simple divine fact about humanity’s relationship with the unlimited creator of the universe. We may perceive an individual as being bad or even intrinsically evil but judgment for their immortal souls belongs exclusively to God. I always like an old adage that goes like this, “if I ever get to heaven, I may be surprised by who I see there, and they may be even more surprised to see me.” I’ll admit, over the years for a long time, as I’ve meditated on this parable about weeds and wheat or last week’s parable about seeds, especially the ones falling into thorns choked by worldly anxiety, there was something always bothering me. You see, if we’re not careful both parables can make life, heaven, and hell sound kind of random or worse yet, they can make God’s love sound like it is exclusively reserved for preselected people. I know now however, there is nothing further from the truth. If you’ve lived life for a while and think back to times when you were say maybe,,, struggling in school, or first dating, or trying to make ends meet while raising a family, or competing for promotions at work, or trying to buy that first house, you realize there may have been times when your life wasn’t very spiritually fruitful. In fact, I now realize there were times in my own past when thoughts of God, salvation, or prayer were nowhere in my daily routine. I even wonder; was there a period in my life when I was one of those weeds or a seed in the thorns? Thankfully, with reflection on the whole of Scripture, guidance from the Church, and maybe some help from the Holy Spirit I realize now these parables are not “either / or” propositions. God doesn’t intentionally create some people as weeds and some people as wheat nor does God throw souls into the wind to randomly fall in the thorns, or on stony ground, or in fertile soil. If you’re not careful, you can come to those conclusions, however. You can read the Bible too narrowly and pick out verses here and there that help support your personal image of what you want God to be. Those tend to be the same people who like to do God’s judgment work for him. Here’s the thing; some of us here today may have actually spent some time as those ugly weeds but at some point, with God’s help, we decided to change and now we’re wheat growing in that good old fertile soil. My sisters and brothers, sin must never be viewed as a permanent state. Like we heard from the Book of Wisdom today, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” This is the greatest gift of our Christian faith; God loves us all so much, even great sinners, God is always ready to forgive. So, here’s a challenge and homework for us all today. Most of us know people out there from all age groups, but especially some of our youth, who may be temporarily living life like the weeds in our parable today or maybe tangled in those thorns of life’s tribulations. First and foremost, we must be confident, sin is not a permanent state of life, second, we don’t judge, third, pray for them no matter how nasty they may seem. And finally, if we’re really, really brave, we offer them a hand to pull them up and out of the weeds, rocks, or thorns into God’s fertile soil.