Twenty Third Sunday of Ordinary Time: Reevaluating Our Relationships

Lectionary Readings:

• Wisdom 9:13-18. If we can scarcely guess about earthly things, how can we ever know heavenly secrets? God sends the Holy Spirit to make known our paths on earth.
• Philemon 9-10, 12-17. In returning the runaway slave Onesimus to his owner Philemon, Paul asks the latter to receive the slave as a beloved brother.
• Luke 14: 25-33. We are to renounce all our possessions to be a disciple of Christ, even our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes our very self.

Thoughts for Your Reflection: by John Gonzalez

This week Scripture challenges us to rethink our relationships. The Gospel passage is one of the most challenging verses we hear from Jesus. If we take them literally then we are forced to turn against the very fabric of our social nature. What culture has not accepted the primacy of the family unit? And yet here we have Jesus debasing that very unit as he offers his steep terms for discipleship.

This passage is not meant to be taken literally. In other passages Jesus defends the commandment to honor father and mother [Mark 7:10-13] and if we are expected to apply his great commandment to love one another then the act of hating father, mother, wife and children would severely compromise this principal mandate. What Jesus does here though is to give us a powerful impression of the great cost and sacrifice that is discipleship and the effects this will have on all our relationships. The object of our hate is not our family or any other member of the human community. Instead it is our own pride, our own passions and desires; our own self-interest becomes the object of our contempt. We are called to carry the Cross and to sacrifice our own will towards a Divine Will that will redefine us completely. This was the path of “mystical death” that was prescribed by St. Paul of the Cross, The Passionist founder. Our journey is to embrace the death of our will and passions and to accept a “divine rebirth” into a holy life whereby all that we do and all that we are to one another is redefined for a great and common good that is not our own. 

For St. Paul of the Cross this mystical process was a journey of a lifetime. We slowly shed a layer of our own will and passions one at a time and become reborn through phases. Jesus is also suggesting that this radical call to discipleship is one that should not happen in an instant. In the Gospel Jesus offers to examples of how the call to discipleship ought to be done with deliberative assessment, using the image of deliberate planning that goes into constructing a tower or conducting a military operation. Thus the first reading reminds us of the place of Wisdom within this spiritual process. We are reminded again about the virtue of humility as we accept a greater Wisdom that again is not our own.

The author of the book of Wisdom reminds us that we are limited and corrupted through our humanity so if we are to seek the things that are in heaven we must give ourselves over the Creator through whom authentic wisdom is granted. We are called to be contemplative. We have access to this Wisdom but we do not always discern it well since our self-interest and desires can get in the way. So we must constantly discern the true wisdom that is different from the “wisdom of the world.”

In discerning the Wisdom of God Paul sees his own human relationships in a different light. Since we are all children of God then we must begin to see each other with the sacred dignity that we all share. Paul urges Philemon to reevaluate his relationship with the slave Onesimus and to see him “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.” In social matters such as with the institution of slavery Paul is telling Philemon that some social relationships are unacceptable because they contradict the essence of relationship that comes from true Wisdom. But Paul also knows that he cannot impose this on Philemon since he also respects the dignity and freedom that Philemon enjoys. So he requests that Philemon reevaluate his relationship with Onesimus not by giving him a command but by urging him to freely alter this relationship. “I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.” Following the Wisdom of the most high will alter all our social relationships and institutions but if we, like St. Paul, are encouraged to bring people towards this new form of relationship freely then we must be patient with this process. Forcing people to change will not bring an authentic conversion.   

Wisdom, humility and patience are three virtues that are impressed on us this weekend. As we review the political rhetoric regarding the social issues we face we need to see how they reflect a Wisdom that captures the vision for the common good, a humility of not promoting a self-interested agenda, and a patience for gently bringing the community towards this vision. Here are the steps for an authentic process for just and lasting change.