Jesus is not requiring us all to go home and hate our families. He is calling His disciples to something quite radical. This is a passage that speaks of the great cost of discipleship, the cost of remaining close to Jesus. The difficult, costly thing is that this is loving in God’s way, and not only in the ordinary ways that make life secure and happier for ourselves.
All this means that to be Jesus’ friend and follower, we are called to live lives of loving others. This is costly: ultimately it costs our lives, which is why we cannot “love” our ambitions, plans, investments and so forth, as if they were the real things of living. What Jesus teaches, and what we see reflected in the lives of saints like Therese, is a way of loving that calls us beyond these things, a sharing in the Wisdom of God, who sees things differently from our world. This is one of the reasons the Church encourages us to “give” up things – through fasting and almsgiving, through the dedicating of time to prayer and care of people in need. Jesus promises, it is in this giving away of ourselves that we will draw close to Him, and discover a new way of living and loving. In such a culture we cling to what we possess, with a kind of love and, often, a kind of selfishness. Inspired by today’s readings, let us pray to be able to lift our eyes to look beyond our own concerns and learn to pay the cost of discipleship – the cost of a love beyond our own needs and wants.