The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 26, 2022

Luke 9, 51–62

When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village. As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The second part of the Gospel reading, dealing with the Lord’s call, helps explain the first part, dealing with James and John and their desire to call down the wrath of God on an inhospitable city.

“As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ ”  The Lord Jesus and a large following are making their way to Jerusalem, where the crowd with him will announce him as the conquering Messiah.  This man who promises to follow Jesus wherever he goes is expressing his enthusiasm for the restoration of Israel, but this is not true faith.  His enthusiasm reminds of us of the Parable of the Sower and the seed spread on stony ground, “where they had not much earth: and they sprung up immediately, because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched: and because they had not root, they withered away” (Matthew 13, 5-6).  “The sun was up and they were scorched” — the hardness of life of the true disciple: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”  

The Lord then called a second man, but he answered, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” To which Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their dead.”  The second man is saying that he will follow the Lord later after his father has died and he is secure in his inheritance.  But the Lord’s call is urgent: “But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  This man offers quite a different response than that of James and John when they were called: “And forthwith he called them. And leaving their father Zebedee in the ship with his hired men, they followed him” (Mark 1, 20).  Even if the man had indeed gotten news of the death of his father and intended to return to bury him, the Lord’s call takes precedence.  

It is a similar case with the man who said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  He is in fact saying: Lord, I will follow you, but on my own terms.  But the Lord has made it abundantly clear: “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10, 37). 

The disciple of the Lord, then, must be completely available to him at all times.  He may be called upon to give up his life in martyrdom, to cross the vast seas as a missionary, to live enclosed in a monastery as a religious, to live out life as a mother or father or single person who does the necessary work of giving good example to their neighbors, to raise their children in the faith, and to assist their spouse in the life of faith.  We see this in the first reading, in which the Prophet Elijah calls Elisha to join him in his life as a prophet of God.  Elisha does not hesitate, and provides a sign of his irreversible acceptance by butchering the oxen with which he was plowing his fields — twelve of them, a sign of his great wealth.

The disciple must continuously strive to conform his life to that of his Master.  In this he must work to avoid confusing his own will with the Master’s.  Thus, James and John desire to call down fire on the inhospitable Samaritan town.  But they do not argue with the Lord when he corrects them and they move on peacefully.  

So let us then make ourselves fully available to the Lord, calling down the Holy Spirit with our words, actions, and prayers upon the people whom we meet everyday.