Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time

September 7, 2025

Luke 14: 25-33

The Book of Wisdom is correct in telling us in the first reading that “Scarce do we guess the things of earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?” So commitment to God goes beyond our understanding, but by walking in his ways, we are given his wisdom.

Jesus says in the gospel: “If anyone comes to me without hating is [parents]...whoever does not carry his or her cross...anyone who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

If Jesus placed an advertisement in a local paper under “help wanted,” and used this pitch, no one would have bothered to reply. It’s got to be one of the least attractive job descriptions ever to surface. And, yet we are told that great crowds followed Jesus, and we know that some remained with him even through his crucifixion.

Those who have come after him should be now getting the picture that the way ahead could be too demanding for the usual baggage we tend to carry with us on life’s journey. Jesus was at the point of issuing marching orders, pointing out that possessions, and even relationships, might prevent his followers from picking up whatever cross would be discovered along the way.

This message sounds insensitive, uncomfortable, and burdensome, but I am sure that Jesus was not asking anything of them that he did not require of himself.

Experience shows us that one important choice often excludes others; to marry means to put husband or wife before parents, to allow children their freedom as adults means not keeping them dependent on us; a decision for a single lifestyle means not marrying. But no matter what our human relationships, says Jesus, Christians have to surrender first place to him.

It’s like when Dietrich Bonhoeffer compared ‘costly grace’ and ‘cheap grace.’ Cheap grace is grace without the Cross, and so without Jesus Christ. He wrote: In comparing these two graces “the person hears the call to discipleship and wants to follow, but feels obliged to insist on his or her own terms...But then discipleship is no longer discipleship, but a program of our own to be arranged to suit ourselves.”

I once read an excerpt written by Father Tony Kadavil that struck forcefully. I wasn’t that I didn’t know these facts, but it was seeing them so starkly and plainly displayed:

The real cost of Christian discipleship is meeting daily the demands Jesus makes upon his followers. Jesus demands that his followers carry a cross: the sign of his death.

Simon the Zealot was crucified

Bartholomew-Nathaniel was flayed alive

James (son of Zebedee) was beheaded

The other James (son of Alphaeus) was beaten to death

Thomas was run through with a lance

Matthias was stoned and then beheaded

Levi Matthew was slain by the sword

Simon Peter was crucified upside down

Andrew was crucifies sideways

Jude Thaddeus was shot to death with arrows

Philip was hanged

The demands that Jesus makes upon those who would follow him are extreme. Christianity is not a Sunday morning religion. It is a hungering after God, to the point of death if need be, at least uncomfortable. It shakes our foundations, topples our priorities, pits us against friend and family, and makes us strangers in this world.

We can find our way only through the words and life of Jesus. Putting God first is to understand the real meaning of following him. The way we live decides the kind of grace that is important to us. But really, the only grace is that of the Cross.

Fr. John Tran