DISCIPLESHIP AND THE CROSS

Luke 14, 25 – 33: :If you want to be my disciples, take up your cross and follow me.”

There is no theology of cheap grace. In the imitation of Jesus, there is no room for excuses, cheap bargains or easy compromises. To imitate Jesus presupposes an unconditional and complete commitment, a love ready to go all the way. This task is so serious and radical that one should not take it up recklessly and thoughtlessly. It should be the fruit of mature deliberation and sober reflection.

Before becoming something, one has to figure things out, to ask oneself whether he can carry the matter to a happy conclusion. If you don’t want to meet with failure, do not commit yourself lightly and thoughtlessly. To begin something poorly is worse than not beginning at all. It’s a matter of all or nothing. It doesn’t tolerate half-heartedness, dilly-dallying, or compromises. Those who opt for Jesus must not have another master (or, putting it cynically for a celibate priest, another mistress!) those who are not ready for or not capable of detachment and self-renunciation would do better not to start. There is no joy in a half-hearted Christianity or priesthood. Instead of being a power and a stimulus, it becomes a stumbling block, a meaningless chore. Christian discipleship is a power and liberation. Mortification is really vivification of the impulses I truly want to live out in action at the service of men and women. Abnegation is the pacification of the inner turmoil through letting go of the desires that are contrary to what I really want. Self-denial is really self-affirmation of my deepest self, the personal identity I am committed to actualize by opening myself to the gifts of God.

The Catholic priest is expected to be marked by an identity specified by his openness to God and humanity, mediator between God and man, precisely because he participates intrinsically in the great high priesthood of Jesus Christ himself. This is a gift and task, an endowment with a powerful purpose. In celebrating the Paschal Mystery the priest unites himself with Jesus who is both the offerer and the sacrifice, priest and victim, crushed and glorified, as he allows God to take over his life day by day, definitively and forever.

 The more willingly accepts this calling and exercise, he more effectively does he lead his people in prayer and in their surrender to God in Jesus.

We too will encounter and recognize the Lord even in the most trying and distressing situations when we cannot cope, despite our best human resources. God may speak loud and clear in power. But more often than not in the still small voice of a personal experience. Like Peter, we waver and hesitate when we look at the threatening waves of difficulties, failure or opposition. It is only when we keep our gaze steadily on Jesus, the “Unsinkable One”, in persevering prayer, that we find new strength and unexpected power, which can keep us serene an in good humour even in the midst of the greatest storms and stresses of life. Whether for priest or layperson, courage is not something we need rarely, but what we need on a daily basis: to live, to suffer, to struggle and to die. Winston Churchill ranked courage as “the first of the human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.” The famed aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, who went down with her aircraft over the Pacific and was never found again, understood that without courage, personal contentment is not possible: “courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows not release from little things.”