The WORD in other words (2006) by Sr. Arlene Lobitana, SSpS
Wednesday 31st Week in Ordinary Time
Mother Teresa of Calcutta once told this story:
A few weeks ago, two young people came to our house and gave me quite a sum of money to feed the poor. In Calcutta, we cook for 9,000 people every day. The two of them wanted their money to be used to feed these hungry people. I then asked them, “Where did you get that much money?”
They answered, “Two days ago, we were married. Before our wedding, we decided that we would not spend money on special wedding clothes, nor would we have a wedding banquet. We wanted the money that we would have spent on these things to go to the poor.”
For high-caste Hindus to do this was considered scandalous. Their friends and relatives found it unthinkable that a couple from such prominent families should get married without special wedding clothes and a proper wedding feast.
So Mother Teresa asked them, “Why did you give me all this money?”
They gave her this surprising answer:“We love one another so much that we wanted to make a special sacrifice for each other at the very beginning of our married life.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus confronts us with the real demands of accompanying him on his journey. He reminds us that discipleship requires letting go of whatever prevents us from following him wholeheartedly.“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). He concludes,“Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple”(Luke 14:33).
Discipleship therefore demands deliberate and total commitment. Jesus himself uses the examples of a person planning to build a tower and a king preparing for battle to remind his followers to consider seriously the cost involved (Luke 14:28-32). We must know what we are committing ourselves to and what sources of security, attachments, or comfort zones we may be asked to surrender in order to follow Jesus faithfully.
Hopefully, our letting go will be like that of the couple in the story: a letting go born of love and undertaken for the sake of love. For following Christ ultimately means learning to say, with Saint Paul, that everything else is secondary compared with the supreme good of knowing Christ (cf. Philippians 3:7-8).
