Sept. 8, 2013: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary C
Listen to this lengthy job description: Long-term team players needed for challenging permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24-hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, but travel expenses are not reimbursed. The pay is far below federal minimum wage, but out of pocket expenses are frequent and expected. BENEFITS: While no health insurance, no pension, and no paid holidays are offered, job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs for life. Does this job appeal to you? Who would take such a job? But most of you do, as a parent, grandparent, sibling, friend, or neighbor. Actually, it’s a job description for a disciple of Jesus. For a disciple, the work is hard, the hours are long and the pay is low. But the retirement benefits are out of this world. For a disciple, on the job attitude all depends on how well you know for whom you are working.
In today’s Gospel we see that Jesus didn’t hide the reality from his disciples. He pointed out the difficulties, the hardships, and the sacrifices that would be required of those who would follow him. He told them in no uncertain terms that it wouldn’t be easy. So they could not complain later on, ‘Oh, we never thought it was going to be like this!’
It’s possible to be a follower of Christ without being a disciple. Once someone approached a well-known professor about a young man and asked, ‘So and so tells me that he was one of your students. Is that true?’ To which the professor replied, ‘That man did indeed attend my lectures, but believe me he was never a real student of mine.’ It is one of the great handicaps of the Church that in it there are many people who follow Christ at a safe distance, but very few real disciples, that is, people who actually do what he said. Some may be comfortable church-goers who give little heed to the misery of the needy and the groaning of the poor. Some melt away as soon as a demand is made on them, like snow before the sun. For some the flicker of enthusiasm is blown out by the first opposition and criticism.
A parishioner told me this week that when he first got his teaching position at our Catholic school in 1960’s, he wasn’t paid much. In those days, he got a paycheck every two weeks for $138. Raising 8 children in a 2 bedroom and 1 bath house was difficult, if not almost impossible on that pay. But he and his wife knew for whom they were working --Our Lord. They lived paycheck to paycheck, always anxious whether they could pay the bills. He said, “Father, my children didn’t know we were poor. Family vacations were always to Grand Isle with a tent. That’s all we could afford. We didn’t always have what we wanted, but we always had what we needed. He and his wife, both retired from teaching many years in Catholic schools, touched many people’s lives. Their life of simplicity and humility was a model of how disciples should follow Jesus.
Jesus said in following him there is a place for common sense, for prudence, for counting up the cost, for discernment to see if one has what it takes. Self-knowledge is important. Yet we may underestimate or overestimate ourselves. We may need a challenge or suffering to bring the best out of us. The one for whom we work, Our Lord, does not write us off when we fail, just as he did not write off Peter and other apostles who failed to be at the Calvary. Repentance and second chance are always possible. Jesus is generous with his grace to those who strive to answer his call.
