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The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

In this Sunday’s responsorial psalm, we are reminded of our own mortality: “You make an end of them in their sleep; the next morning they are like the changing grass, which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades” (Psalm 90:5-6). Our lives are short. So quickly we forget our mortality, our littleness, and the brevity of this earthly life. Our death is inevitable.

The first reading is taken from Wisdom 9:13-18. In our ignorance and mortal frailty, we are in need of “God’s counsel” to know what to do with the few hours granted us in this life. “Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight, and men learned what was your pleasure, and were saved by Wisdom” (9:17-18).

God’s Wisdom – the Divine Word – became flesh, and through the Holy Gospel, our earthly paths are made straight. For this reason, we stand when the Gospel is read. As those in a courtroom rise for the judge, or as all rise when a person of importance enters the room, so we rise to honor the words of our King, to learn the path we must follow to imitate him in his footsteps.

In today’s Gospel, taken from Luke 14:25-33, Jesus addressed not just the intimate circle of his twelve apostles, but the “great crowds.” To them, to you, to me, he said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

In the first century, the cross was the equivalent of the torture chamber. Jesus’ audience knew full well what went into the horrific punishment of crucifixion, and he used this image to emphasize the radical commitment of the Christian life. One must be willing to give all, even one’s own life, for the sake of the mission ahead. Family ties, material possessions, secular ambitions, etc. must all be laid at the altar in today’s Mass. Not one aspect of our lives carries greater importance than the goal of our Christian baptism: personal holiness. This holiness is obtained through the sacrifice of self.

In Jesus, we are given a purpose worth dying for. In fact, the Twentieth Century witnessed more martyrs than the previous nineteen centuries combined! If we do not give God the gift of traditional martyrdom, we are still called to the unbloody martyrdom of dying to one’s own self. In losing our life, we gain eternal life. This is the mystery, the paradox, of Christianity. It’s also the fundamental driving force behind the covenant of Holy Matrimony, which is itself an image of the nuptial love between Christ and the Church.

In 197 AD, Tertullian wrote: “It is a love so noble that causes our enemies to put a brand upon us. ‘See,’ they say, ‘how they love one another’” (Apology, 39).