Philippians 2:12-18
One night, when he was quite old, John Ruskin, the 19th-century British writer, was sitting in front of a window in his home. He was staring out into the night across the town to a distant hillside street. There the torch of the town's lamplighter was igniting street lamp after street lamp. Because of the darkness, the lamplighter himself could not be seen. All that could be seen was his torch and the trail of lights he left behind him.
"After a few minutes, Ruskin turned to a friend and said, "That illustrates what I mean by a genuine Christian. You may not know him or ever see him, but his way has been marked by the lights he leaves burning."" Ralph L. Woods
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What lights are we leaving behind us? "Every believer in this world must become a spark of light."
John XXIII, Pacem in Terris
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Introduction
St. Augustine said: “Love and do what you want,” not to declare that in the name of love anything goes, but that if we truly love, then, we are ready to give our all to God and our neighbor. We will know what is right. When love is no longer authentic, we will know too and do what is to be done to remain faithful. This genuine love must be ready to follow Jesus without reservations.
Jesus stresses that Christians must follow Jesus radically and consistently. They must know what they are doing. They may not stop halfway, but must look ahead. They must take their Christianity seriously.
Opening Prayer
God our Father, we have accepted your invitation to follow your Son Jesus, as his disciples. We do not know what the future has in store yet we are willing to live in hope and joy. without fear or discouragement. Give us the strength of your Spirit to take our faith seriously and to accept our task in life with all its consequences. For we are certain Jesus will lead us to you, our loving God, forever and ever.
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Commentary
To the Lord, you don’t surrender anything until you surrender everything
Corporate planners and management trainers would always insist on making positive statements instead of negatives. Anything that begins with “Don’t” or “No” is not much appreciated. To the standards of today’s management strategists, Jesus’ plan was a failure from the start! How could he draw up his master plan for recruiting his disciples by such strange and negative requirements?
Today’s passage presents three conditions for discipleship, and they are non-negotiable! If you don’t hate everyone else, if you don’t carry your own cross, and if you don’t give up everything you have, then you cannot be a disciple of Christ! Wait a moment! Did we not say that we are disciples of Jesus? Take time to go back to the gospel of today. Jesus has some message for us.
Discipleship of Christ does not come free of cost; it involves a price. Evangelist Luke deliberates on the price of discipleship. If not careful with the reading, the passage could lead to some wrong understanding of the teaching of Jesus. The text proposes that discipleship requires one ‘to hate’ father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters and even one’s own life. How would we understand this exhortation “to hate”, when throughout the rest of the Gospel, we find Jesus command his disciples to love even the enemies and to pray for those who persecute. This command “to hate” seems totally unchristian!
Jesus does not recommend a literal abandonment of one’s family. That could be an act of irresponsibility and a violation of that commandment of love. It is rather a dramatic way of saying that anyone who puts any person, even those closest to them, before total commitment to Christ and his mission is not ready to be a disciple. You do not give anything to the Lord until you give him everything. There is no middle ground; it is either total or nothing. This is the cost of discipleship.
Jesus speaks of the new family he establishes for those who listen to and accept his Word. Remember when the Mother of Jesus together with his brothers came to meet Jesus, he pointed towards those who were listening to him and said, here are my Mother, brothers and sisters. The only criteria to become a member of the family of Jesus is to listen to the Word of God and keep it. Again, when a woman from among the crowd shouts praising the mother of Jesus, his response was also exactly the same: ‘Those who hear the Word of God and keep it are even more blessed’
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Feast Day November 4
Charles Borromeo was born in northern Italy in 1538 to an established and wealthy family. Trained in civil and canon law in Pavia, he was called to Rome as a young man by his uncle, Pope Pius IV, to be secretary of state at the Vatican. “Always clear and precise in his views, firm in his demeanor, and constant in the execution of his projects,” as one biographer has remarked, he played an important role in convincing Pius to reconvene the Council of Trent, which sought to address corruption in a sixteenth-century church beleaguered by Protestantism. Under the auspices of that council, beginning in 1563 Borromeo supervised the writing of an accurate catechism, rewrote liturgical texts and music, and began enforcing clerical reform in Rome. Pope Pius IV named Borromeo archbishop of Milan but kept him in Rome performing a multitude of official functions.
When Borromeo arrived in Milan, he faced a daunting task. Milan was the largest archdiocese in Italy at the time, with more than 3,000 clergy and 800 thousand people. Both its clergy and laity had drifted from church teaching. The selling of indulgences and ecclesiastical positions was prevalent; monasteries were “full of disorder”; many religious were “lazy, ignorant, and debauched,” and some did not even understand how to properly administer the sacraments. The city had seen no resident bishop for 80 years. Borromeo immediately called a synod of his bishops to inform them of the new decrees. Setting an example of personal frugality and order, Borromeo reduced his household staff, forbade his retainers to accept any presents, and sold some of his property to help feed the poor. He began preaching in churches and monasteries, combining “exhortation with intimidation.” He also addressed the backsliding of laypeople, curtailing Sunday entertainments and requiring that all teachers profess the faith. Always interested in religious education, Borromeo established the Confraternities of Christian Doctrine to teach religion to children, and the organization grew to include 740 schools, three thousand catechists, and forty thousand students in Sunday schools.
Borromeo’s rigor predictably made him enemies. Before Borromeo went to Milan, while he was overseeing reform in Rome, a nobleman remarked that the latter city was no longer a place to enjoy oneself or to make a fortune. “Carlo Borromeo has undertaken to remake the city from top to bottom,” he said, predicting dryly that the reformer’s enthusiasm “would lead him to correct the rest of the world once he has finished with Rome.” Once Borromeo arrived in his own diocese, he was forced to excommunicate and imprison some Milanese nobles, including some civil authorities, for defying his new policies. Some Milanese complained to the pope about Borromeo’s allegedly excessive rigor, but the archbishop was vindicated. When he ordered the reform of a wealthy and corrupt religious order, the Humiliati, foes attempted to assassinate him.
Borromeo also displayed a gentler aspect, however, and many of his people loved him. During a plague in 1576, he stayed in the city and cared for the sick, ordering that decorative church hangings be tailored into clothing for the destitute. During a famine he incurred great debts to feed more than 60,000 people. In more ordinary times, he liked to wander the city praying with the people. He established hospitals, colleges, orphanages, and other charitable institutions.
An energetic reformer who took “always the most austere and stringent interpretation” of the dictates of the Council of Trent, Charles Borromeo was instrumental in helping reinvigorate the church during the Counter-Reformation. His work, it is said, “gave new confidence to a shaken church.” He died in 1584, at age forty-six, tired from his labors. He was canonized in 1610 and is the patron saint of catechists.
