“I will follow you wherever you go”
As Jesus leaves the Transfiguration and travels with His apostles to Jerusalem, where He would suffer and die, three people, potential disciples or followers, approach him. The conversation between these potential followers and Our Lord give us the conditions for following Him. These inquires by the people occur at an especially crucial point in the Life of Christ. Jesus is going to Jerusalem. He is going not to be praised and enthroned, but rather to be betrayed, mocked, and crucified.
The first person says, “I will follow you wherever you go”. Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.”
“Anyone who desires to be a follower of Christ cannot expect security or worldly advantages.”[i]
The second person is given the invitation by Jesus: “Follow me!” The second person replies, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
The third person says, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”
To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
What then are the conditions for discipleship, to follow Jesus?
First, we cannot expect by following Jesus any security or advantage from a worldly standpoint. For example we cannot buy into “prosperity theology”. This false teaching is sometimes referred to as the gospel of success, prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel. It teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians, and that by following Jesus, God will increase one's material wealth. We might be blessed with worldly advantages, we might not, what is clear is that worldly security and advantages are not promised to the Christian.
Where do we see prosperity theology in our culture? There are many pastors, televangelists, and even Christian organizations that promise God’s blessing if you donate to them or join them. Many times there is the false believe that if we are poor, in despair, or misfortune has occurred in our life, this must mean that we have done something wrong and that God is displeased with us. If we were to use external, worldly advantages to gauge our relationship with God, then we would say that Jesus was not close to God, for Jesus was poor and many misfortunes occurred in His life especially at the end of His life. He was a man of no worldly advantage or status.
Second, the Christian is called to a greater good. Yes, it is good to take care of family and friends to “bury my father” but there is a greater good, that of going out and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Those who enter the religious life or priesthood give up family and even sometimes the care of family in order to solely focus on proclaiming the kingdom of God. Lay people also must remember that although family is a good, God is always the greater good and there are times in which a person will be asked to choose between the good of family and the good of God. Many people who enter the Church are disowned by family members. Many spouses who choose to go to Mass and pray regularly are shunned by their spouse.
What are some examples of a call to the greater good? There are many that give up the good of family to serve the good of country. There are others that may give up the good of a prosperous job opportunity for the good of family. There is always the opportunity to say “no” to an earthly pleasure, and “yes” to spiritual pleasures such as virtue. When we fast, we are saying “no” to an earthly pleasure, and “yes” to the virtue. We may give up the good of food and drink for our self in order to give it to another, the virtue of charity or hospitality. If we are able to say “no” to small things throughout the day, for example, an extra serving of desert, one more television show, an extra hour of sleep, we begin to learn to say “no” to greater things, for example the temptation to sin. We say “no” now, so that we can say “no” to something greater later.
What are some other examples of saying “no” to something earthly, so that we may say “yes” to something heavenly?
VIDEO – Attraction (Shadow Theatre Group) 1st Audition Britain's Got Talent
This performance shows the sacrifices of life, the giving up of one good for another.
As Christians we are always called to avoid evil and pursue good, the challenge of the Christian comes in when we must choose between two or more “good” things. In this case we must discern what is the greater good, what is God’s will, and then we must do the good without hesitation.
Monks and nuns live a strict life of obedience. When the bell rings for Liturgy of the Hours or Mass, the monks and nuns must report immediately, without delay, to the chapel for prayer. There is a story of Saint Teresa of Avila, in which she was writing a letter. She was done with the letter and signing her name at the bottom. When she was on the last letter of her name, the chapel bell rang. She heard the bell, stopped what she was doing, put the pen down, and left for the chapel. On her paper she signed her name “Teres_”. The counsel of obedience, and obedience without hesitation was important that finishing the job that she was doing.
“We give up our country and our family, without losing love for our country and our family, but this undoubtedly raises this love to a higher and broader significance…Woe to us if we should even now be thinking of a comfortable home…of a pattern of life which brings us glory or honor or worldly satisfaction!”[ii]
Third, the Christian can never look back, to stall for even the slightest thing is to delay in the proclamation of the Kingdom. We must have right away obedience in all things. The third person in the Gospel was asking Jesus for a delay in following him, in favor of his family. “Jesus did not hesitate to declare that there must be not time wasted in following his call. There are cases in which a delay or a return to one’s previous ways could jeopardize everything…”[iii]
Blessed Junipero Serra is an perfect example of this Gospel and took for His motto, “Always go forward – never turn back!” “At his beatification on September 25, 1988, Fray Junipero Serra, O.F.M., S.T.D. (1713-1784), was declared by His Holiness Pope John Paul II to be a ‘shining example of Christian Virtue and the Missionary Spirit.’ The new Blessed is truly an international luminary. He distinguished himself as an exemplary Franciscan priest, respected in academic circles, and acclaimed in the pulpit by the age of thirty-five. During the next two decades, he labored as an apostolic missionary throughout central Mexico, notably in the Sierra Gorda among the Pame Indians. During the final fifteen years of his life, he emerged as a pioneer and the Apostle of California. Dramatically he demonstrated the natural and supernatural branch of his missionary motto: ‘Always go forward - never turn back!’”[iv]
Each Saint has this apostolic zeal of forwarding the Gospel, this is why in the entrance antiphon we pray, “All nations clap your hands, shout out to God with a voice of joy.” The nations that were exposed to the Gospel because of the tireless work of the apostles could clap their hands and shout to God with a voice of joy. Mexico and in fact the coast of California can clap it’s hands and shout to God with a voice of joy because of the tireless work of Blessed Junipero Serra. To bring the Gospel to these lands was not a comfortable task for the apostles, nor was it comfortable for modern Saints such as Blessed Junipero Serra, but the faith is not about comfort it is about joy.
Pope Francis warns us about the “cozy structures” that keep us from moving forward. What are the “cozy structures” the “comfort zones” in our life? This comfort keeps us from apostolic zeal. Pope Francis uses the example of Saint Paul who in his apostolic zeal shunned a life of comfort in favor of the Life of Christ, the Life of the Gospel.
“Paul is a nuisance: he is a man who, with his preaching, his work, his attitude irritates others, because testifying to Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus Christ makes us uncomfortable, it threatens our comfort zones – even Christian comfort zones, right? It irritates us. The Lord always wants us to move forward, forward, forward ... not to take refuge in a quiet life or in cozy structures, no?... And Paul, in preaching of the Lord, was a nuisance. But he had deep within him that most Christian of attitudes: Apostolic zeal. He had its apostolic zeal. He was not a man of compromise. No! The truth: forward! The proclamation of Jesus Christ, forward!”[v]
Today’s Gospel is a comfort check for the Christian, it gives us the opportunity to “meditate upon the strong words of the gospel in order to react against a concept of Christianity that is mediocre, easy, lazy, reduced to the measure of our own convenience and interests.”[vi]
[i] Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.; Divine Intimacy, Vol. III
[ii] Cardinal Roncalli, Venice, Mar.3, 1957
[iii] Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.; Divine Intimacy, Vol. III
[iv] Introduction of the Nine Day Novena to Blessed Junipero Serra - http://www.serraus.org/resources
[v] Pope Francis; May 16, 2013
[vi] Ibid