Cost of Discernment: Renouncing all that is not of God
(Homily for XXIII Sunday in Ordinary Time)[1]
First week of September… Some of you may be back to work, some of
you back to school... Time of questions. What are your priorities now? More
importantly, whose advice are you taking to decide what you should do with your
time, what you should “build” in this new year of activities, to what you
should devote yourself?
Who can know
God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends? (Wisdom 9:13) What are the criteria for discerning when
I am hearing God’s “counsel” and when I am hearing either my own, or even the
devil’s counsel? How do we find out what is God’s will for us? Unfortunately,
for some people, this is not even a question: they think that whatever comes to
their minds producing pleasant emotions must come from God. Today the Lord says
tough things and very difficult to understand, so that we may realize that the
voice of the Lord is not always so sweet. Today the Lord invites us to
calculate the cost, to sit down and reflect, so that we may not be deceived, so
that we may not lose the way to eternal life. Who can know God’s counsel?
Teach us to
number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart (Psalm 90:12). The day of our death is every day
closer. Our Judge is coming, with twenty thousand warriors, and we have only
ten thousand (Luke 14:25-33). Twenty thousand is
what God expected us to do, and ten thousand is what we have done so far… Are we ready? We need
to sit down and reflect. When you realize that one day everything will be over,
and you will be in front of your Judge to settle the accounts, with no money to
pay fines, with no friends or relatives to say a word on your behalf… when you
think of that moment, you and your Judge alone… then you realize how little we
should care for the things we usually care about so much! We care so much about
money, that sometimes we commit sin to get more. We care so much about what our
relatives and friends say, that we sometimes prefer to agree with them and deny
God, rather than staying strong in our faith. So much we care about maintaining
our friendship with those we love, that sometimes we prefer to commit sin
rather than displeasing them. And where will they be, I wonder, where will they
be when I will be alone and naked in front of my Judge? Who of them will defend
me?
We must not displease God in an effort to
please our neighbour: this is what makes sense of Jesus’ saying, “Whoever comes
to me and does not hate father and mother”, etc. “cannot be my disciple.” It is
not about not honouring our parents. Jesus’ command applies to those situations
in which there is a conflict between the true love of God and what seems
to be the love of our neighbour. It means that we cannot displease God
to please our neighbour. It means that we must prefer to be rejected by our own
friends, rather than being rejected by God on the day of Judgement. We must
reflect upon this.
Here is where I wanted to arrive: many
times, it is because we do not reflect upon the shortness of our lives that we
fail to perceive God’s will in a given situation. We do not reflect upon the
value of things: what are these things—and even people—in comparison with God
and Eternal Life? People must be loved, of course, but what is their opinion or
approval in comparison with God’s opinion and approval? God is first, God must
be our first love. When our loves are not in order, when our priorities are not
in order, we cannot figure out the right path. It is as if we needed to open
the door of Heaven in our minds, and let the light of eternity illumine our
decisions. We need to think about eternity first, and then come back to earth
and see: “In what way will this help me to attain eternal life? Will this
actually help me? Will I be happy to have chosen this or that, the day I will stand
before the Lord, my Judge? If I die in the next few minutes, will I be happy
with the decision I am about to make?”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about
building a tower. This can be interpreted in two ways. First way, the tower as
discernment. The foundation of discernment is the capacity we all have to
understand things. But that capacity needs to grow “higher”, greater, if we
don’t want to be deceived. A tower is the high place from which the whole
property can be watched and protected. When the enemy comes, if you have a
tower, you see the enemy from afar, before he or she enters and damages your
property. But if you don’t have a tower, by the time you see your enemy, that
enemy has already damaged or stolen all your property. The same thing happens
when we do not have discernment: the devil enters our lives without our even
realizing… that is, by the time we realize it was the devil, it’s already too
late. We need to calculate the cost of building that tower of discernment. What
should we do to grow in discernment? Jesus answers: renounce all things, prefer
God to everything else and everyone else in your life. There are other things
we should do to grow in discernment, but this one is first.
Second way, the tower means our good works. To
lay the foundation is to believe in Jesus and begin following Him. To finish
the tower is to follow Him to the end, by doing what He taught. Today Jesus is
telling us the price of following Him. We have listened to His message, we
believe in Him, we have laid the foundation… are we willing to follow Him to
the end? Are we ready to renounce all things, for the only one thing, for the
only One who can make us truly happy?
Let me suggest
two practical steps:
1.
First, focus on one decision or
discernment which is now in front of you, whether that has to do with your vocation,
your job, a relationship, your family, your spiritual life, your physical
health, or something else.
2.
Second, ask yourself three
questions. How will I proceed in this matter if I want to please God more than
anyone else? How will I proceed if I keep in mind that I may have very little
time left to live? What must I renounce to make my tower strong enough and tall
enough for me to see the enemy’s approach?
May God grant us
the grace to be happy when He comes to meet us. May we find in Him a merciful Judge…
a Father so happy about the decisions we have made.
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