(Audio)
Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
From the perspective of our disordered passions the fact that Jesus comes to restore us to right relationship with God and with one another appears threatening. He wants to put our disordered passions back in order so that they can actually be conducive to happiness and flourishing. But to the degree that we have invested our identity in things which are not God, to which we value and worship things which are less than him, this will feel at first more like the sword than like peace.
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit (see John 15:2).
There are only a few commandments higher on the list than honoring father and mother. Jesus places our relationship with him squarely in these.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (see Deuteronomy 6:5).
Family is a great good from God. But it is not so good that it we can allow it to be used as an excuse to not put God first in our lives. Jesus and the truth he came to bring must have the first place. This often takes the character of sacrifice, when we do decide to put Jesus first even though it means suffering, at least in the short term.
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
We are all too ready to try to find life on our own, without specific reference to Jesus. We have a lot of practice at it and we know how to reap the short term benefits. But ultimately anything that is not built on the rock of Christ is temporary. It will leave us hungry. It will not survive the storms of life.
What does it look like to place Jesus first, to take up our crosses, and let him reorder our lives around him? We grow more and more in the concern that we receive him and those who teach and prophecy in his name. In other words, mission begins to take precedence over the status quo. Righteousness begins to matter more than business as usual. This gradually transforms from something we force ourselves to do to something which is greatly rewarding.
whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
and
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.
We are not called simply to correct the externalities of our practice. Rosaries, novenas, liturgies, and the rest are good. But these are not the main thing. The main thing is that we receive new hearts that put first things first.
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.
The call is more than just correcting moral behavior according to a code. It is recognizing that justice is what the Father's hearts desires. The call is to allow our hearts to be shaped more and more to desire those same desires.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.
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