In today’s Gospel Story (Matthew 10:37-42) Jesus is teaching his disciples how he wants them to live, and he is using extreme terms to help them understand the importance of what he is telling them. Because of his way of talking many are put off by this passage, which is pretty much the majority report. As usual, the minority report is as personal as I let it be.
An honest study of the life and teaching of Jesus shows he believed the source of his wisdom and liberating acts came from his deep communion and personal relationship with his Abba who was always beside him. He invites us to know this in our own everyday living. The way this Gospel is worded invites, even presupposes, a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, which itself brings us on a journey of conversion. There is little certainty, a lot of questioning, and an adventure in trusting which can move us to a deepening awareness of Abba happening in our every day living. Each tine we choose to trust without having a clear idea of what or in whom we are trusting we find ourselves going ever deeper in our ongoing encounter with Christ. For many the Eucharist is simply an act to be believed instead of a personal transformation to be experienced.
All our dogmas, practices, liturgies have as their purpose pointing us to a personal encounter Jesus Christ. Many of us are so focused on the right way to think, speak, etc, that we don’t get to where they point us. It is not so much a matter of leading people to find Christ, as it is to recognize Christ already happening in our life. Pope Leo, as Pope Francis before him, is leading the church, kicking and screaming, to be a synodal church, a listening church. We are invited to listen to other’s stories and come to recognize the Trinity already happening in our life, the Spirit showing us how to live as Jesus’ disciples in our own circumstances. Abba is with us disguised as our life, which seems to be the last place we want to find him. Often we are looking for an escape from the unpleasantries of our life, but where we are is the only place we will recognize Abba happening in everything. This seems especially true when we are in difficult situations, relationships, or personnel issues where we live or work closely with other people.
“Whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Many of the difficulties and challenges in our every day living happen in the setting of other people in our life. In our ongoing encounter with Christ. As we hear in the Story, we come to a new word in our relations with others — receive. Gradually we become aware that the people in our life really are of Abba, and receiving others as they are, even forgiving them when they are not as we think they should be, reflects our deepening attitude of trust in Abba on our journey. Some of the people in our life may be prophets in the sense that Abba brings them into our life because they have something Abba wants us to learn. Some may be righteous persons whom we can work with to accomplish some good. Some might need a glass of water in the sense that Abba wants to do some healing in our relationship. Many people in our life we might see as “little ones”, but to Abba they are important, and as we see in Jesus, Abba wants us also to see them as important. The constant in all this is our searching for and welcoming our ongoing encounter not so much “with” Christ as “in” Christ. Often this will seem to make no sense because it is totally different from the values of the society in which we live, a society focused on power and accomplishment, getting our way.
“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” Our cross can be many things in our every day living. It may be the price of living our true self, the self we are in Abba, which is not necessarily the image we want to show to the world, the way we want people to see us. It may be doing what we see as the right thing, something which is not very popular. Again, we try to keep our focus on encountering Christ in whatever is going on around us, and doing our best to live as his disciples.
Jesus says that our encounter with him is the most important thing in our life. Fr Arrupe about our encounter with Christ: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything”. It is worth remembering that Benedict XVI said, “There are as many ways to Abba as there are people.” For even within the same faith each person’s way is an entirely personal one. We have Christ’s word: “I am the way”. In that respect, there is ultimately one way, and everyone who is on the way to God is therefore in some sense also on the way of Jesus Christ. But this does not mean all ways are identical in terms of consciousness and will, but, on the contrary, the one way is so big that it becomes a personal way for each person. Even within the tradition of following Christ, each person’s living Christ’s way is a uniquely personal one based on one’s unique circumstances. As we search our own encounter we come to recognize this and hopefully try to walk together in mutual support, and not in judgement, eg, my/our way is the only true way and everybody else is wrong.
Abba does nothing in me without my consent and cooperation, my willingness to be led and accompanied on my own journey of conversion and transformation. Teilhard de Chardin: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God . . . it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time . . . your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste , , , into what (grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow . . . Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be”. When we look at all this happening in us,, it is quite exciting, certainly not dull. Just sayin . . .