23rd Sunday in Ordinary TIme - September 4, 2022

Wisdom 9: 13-18b + Psalm 90: 3-6, 12-17 + Philemon 9-10, 12-17 + Luke 14: 24-33

As disciples, our relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life.
This relationship requires our total and complete dedication.

Today’s challenging Gospel reminds us of this truth.
We cannot make others, or self, or possessions into God.
We cannot make someone or ourself or any thing into what is most important.
The axis on which the world turns, the center of the universe, is Christ Jesus.

We may love our spouse or our children or our parents with a love 
which is large and beautiful.
But the love that orders these other loves is our love for Christ Jesus.
We may enjoy the beautiful things we have in this life, 
but our ultimate source of joy is in our relationship to Jesus Christ. 
Our relationship with Christ changes the way we relate to everyone/everything else.

To give ourselves fully to Christ Jesus we need to practice the virtue of Prudence.
To make Christ the center, our relationship with Him “Priority #1”, 
we disciples need to live the virtue of Prudence.
Prudence is the first of four Cardinal Virtues—
the others being Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.

Prudence helps us see the “big picture” and then act accordingly.
Prudence puts things and relationships in their proper perspective 
so we can do what is just, use things wisely with temperance, 
& have the fortitude to keep moving deeper into this life giving relationship w/the Lord.

The psalmist today blesses us with this kind of perspective, 
inviting us to see the Big Picture of our life.
The Psalmist cries out that we are dust, our lives our brief, 
we go to sleep and we do not wake up on this earth. 
This big picture perspective helps us remember that with each breath we take 
on this earth we come one breath closer to our last breath; that time is limited, 
that we need to number our days aright.

In the “big picture”, which Prudence helps us see and then act upon, 
we recognize we come from God who is love and are meant to return to the God of love by learning how to love during our brief stay on this spinning green marble 
we call earth. 

Wisdom is a particular way of knowing, while Prudence acts on that knowledge. 
Prudence, founded on wisdom, sees the best way to do the right thing, 
and then does it.
Putting the virtue of Prudence into practice helps us keep Christ Jesus at the center 
of our lives. 

As we act prudently day by day, seeing the best way to do the right thing 
and then doing the right thing, we begin to understand how the cross is the key 
unlocking the mystery of the universe as God has made it to be.

In Jesus’ teaching today in the “Lucan School of Discipleship”
we can easily overlook and not even hear one little instruction:   
“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
This call from Jesus is not an invitation to grit our teeth and endure the arduous.
It’s a call to stretch out our arms and embrace in love, with Jesus,
the rough and the difficult, and perhaps, even the impossible.

Carrying one’s cross daily means imitating Jesus’ letting go of everything 
and giving ourselves to God the Father completely.     
How?   
By dying to our ego-driven self and daily placing our lives, with Jesus, in God’s hands.
By holding lightly onto relationships with others, by never allowing this or that relationship to take the place of God, to think this person can satisfy my yearning and longing for the divine.
By sharing our material possessions, by letting go of our hardened grip on them, recognizing that we do not take our money nor our possessions with us
when we leave this earth.  

Dying daily with Jesus and rising daily with him to new life means 
we begin to reorder our lives, renouncing people or things that have a hold on us, 
and thus are more free to love fully.
From the cross, with Jesus, we see more clearly that everything I have, 
everything I am, everything and everyone we encounter, are not mine to hold onto.

From this perspective of not holding on to anything or anyone, we then can hear how
all creation is God crying out to us in love.
Everything I touch and see holds the possibility of drawing me more deeply 
into that love.
As we follow Jesus as his disciples, we learn from him how to be alive to the possibilities 
in each encounter to be drawn deeper into the love of the Father for all His Creation. 

The temptation we wrestle with each day is to make the finite into the infinite.
Other people and the things of this earth are finite pointing us to the Infinite, 
who is the Source of Life and the source of Every-Thing.
The gifts given us on our short sojourn here are given as “pointers” to the Gift-Giver 
and are not meant to be made into idols, to take the place of God in our life.

Then loving one’s spouse or one’s children opens oneself more fully to the God of love.
Money and possessions cannot satisfy our heart’s desire for the infinite love of God, 
but our wise use of these material gifts, our generous sharing of them, 
can open our hearts up to receive God more fully.

Carrying our cross means stretching out our arms to embrace and love 
the rough and the difficult, to give ourselves fully to the Father with Jesus 
in order to then give ourselves fully to others. 

Because we are swimming upstream in a culture that tempts us to make the finite
into the infinite, to put other people, things, or self in God’s place, 
we need the help of the Holy Spirit. 

Sometimes the call of Christ to put Him first, to make our relationship with Him 
the most important thing, is very difficult.
Sometimes the call of Christ to “renounce” our possessions so that we might be possessed more fully by God’s love and life is very challenging.

There are days when we fail to pay the cost of discipleship, 
when we simply can’t do it on our own power, and then we are tempted to give up and think the way of discipleship is only for a chosen few, like martyrs or saints.   
Our natural resources fail us, so we need supernatural help, 
which is why the Holy Spirit has been given to us.
So, we cry out:  “Come, Holy Spirit.”
So, we call out:  “Come, Holy Spirit!”   
Help us to let go of all we hold onto in order that we might see how God is holding us in the palm of His hand and will never let us go!