Love
God and Hate Your Neighbor?
Now great multitudes accompanied him; and he turned
and said to them, “If any one comes to me and does not
hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,
yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever
does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For
which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the
cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he
has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock
him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and was not able to
finish.’ Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit
down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him
who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while
the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.
So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my
disciple.
(Lk 14-25-33 RSVCE)
From a quick
reading of our gospel, it can appear that our Lord is trying to dissuade the
great multitudes that followed Him.
Picture this: Great multitudes of
people are following a great leader. The
man stops, turns, looks at them, and says: “If anyone comes to me and does not
hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,
yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come
after me, cannot be my disciple…Therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all
that he has cannot be my disciple.” It
sounds as if the man was trying to discourage the people from following him. We, of course, know that He is not, because
there is salvation in none other and it is His desire that all men be
saved. Secondly, it appears that He has
done a 180. The great commandment is to
love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your
neighbor as yourself. So, what is our
Lord telling us?
St. Gregory
reminds us: “The mind is kindled when it hears of heavenly rewards and already
desires to be there, where it hopes to enjoy them without ceasing; but great
rewards cannot be reached except by great labors.”[1] It is for this purpose that our Lord turns
toward the multitudes and tells them these things. St. Theophylact surmises that many of those
that accompanied Him followed not with their whole heart, but lukewarmly, and
He shows what kind of a man his disciple ought to be.[2]
Knowing
why He turned, it still causes us to wonder about His words, “If any one comes to me and does not hate
his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes,
and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” The following sentence goes a long way to
explain it: “Whoever does not bear his
own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” The most common explanation I have heard is: “Jesus
is telling us we cannot love anyone more than God.” That is something easy to say; however, we
are not able to make this judgment accurately.
We can say that we love God more than anything or anyone else; however,
that does not make it true.
St. Gregory
explains: “It may be asked, ‘How are we bid to hate our parents and our
relations in the flesh [when we] are commanded to love even our enemies?’ But
if we weigh the force of the command, we are able to do both, by rightly
distinguishing them so as both to love those who are united to us by the bond
of the flesh and whom we acknowledge our relations, and by hating and avoiding…those
whom we find our enemies in the way of God.”[3]
St. Ambrose
teaches: “The Lord will have us neither be ignorant of nature nor be her
slaves, but so to submit to nature that we reverence the Author of nature and
depart not from God out of love to our parents.”[4]
To
give more clarity to our Lord’s teaching, St. Gregory tells us: “To show that
this hatred towards relations proceeds not from inclination or passion but from
love, our Lord adds, ‘Yes, and his own life also.’ It is plain therefore that a man ought to hate
his neighbor by loving as himself him who hated him. For then we rightly hate our own soul when we
indulge not its carnal desires, when we subdue its appetites, and wrestle
against its pleasures. That which by
being despised is brought to a better condition is, as it were, loved by
hatred.”[5] In other words, if we hate our lives by not
giving in to our senses, during the times that our closes neighbors are in sin,
we--out of love for God and them--should not consent or tolerate the sin(s)
they are committing. We must hate
ourselves by hating our “pet” sins; and, by hating the sins of others, the
world will see us as hating our neighbors or being intolerant.
Our
Lord explains how this hatred of our own lives and that of others is done: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and
come after me, cannot be my disciple.”
Chrysostom explains: “He means not that we should place a beam of wood
on our shoulders, but that we should ever have death before our eyes, [just] as,
also, Paul died daily and despised death.”[6] St. Gregory puts it more simply: “In two ways
we bear our Lord’s cross: either when by abstinence we afflict our bodies, or
when through compassion of our neighbor we think all his necessities our own.”[7] I would note that there is also a third one,
which is mentioned above: by not indulging in our carnal desires, subduing its
appetites and wrestling against its pleasures.
With
that explained, I want to return to the two words, “he turned.” Why are those words there? Why did not the evangelist just write, “Now
great multitudes accompanied him, and he said to them…”? He very well could be emphasizing, “You are
following Me, but you are not FOLLOWING me; you are not conforming yourselves
to Me.” The evangelist inserts these two
words in order that we know that our Lord was emphasizing this point to the
multitudes—and to us. Because of the
words, “he turned,” Christ is also “turning” to us and saying, “You are not
FOLLOWING me; you are not yet conformed to Me.”
We are not the Judge as to whether we are conformed to Him; He is. Therefore, we need to hit our knees,
continuously asking Him to transform us into His image. It would be better for us to go through our
Blessed Mother, therefore loving her (our neighbor) by allowing her to love us
by way of interceding for us, and loving God also. We also can ask for help by going to
Confession and by asking others to pray for us, and we should be praying for
others—even though they are not asking for prayer—because Jesus is speaking to
them also. He is speaking to the great
multitudes.
Jesus
gives the example of building a tower.
Is He saying that, if you deem you do not have sufficient means, you
should not build the tower? This, then,
would not fit what He has just put forth regarding hating your father, mother,
wife, etc. The tower must be built, and
we must find the means in which to build it.
St. Gregory teaches: “Because He had been giving high and lofty
precepts, immediately follows the comparison of building a tower, when it is
said, ‘For which of you intending to build a tower…’ For everything that we do should be preceded
by anxious consideration. If then we
desire to build a tower of humility, we ought first to brace ourselves against
the ills of this world.”[8] The sufficient means is Jesus Christ and His
Church. We must utilize these means at
all times, because as St. Cyril says: “For we fight against spiritual
wickedness in high places, but there presses upon us a multitude also of other
enemies: fleshly lust, the law of sin
raging in our members, and various passions, that is, a dreadful multitude of
enemies.”[9]
Then Jesus gives
the example of the two kings. The
Venerable Theophylact says
regarding this example: “The king is sin reigning in our mortal body, but our
understanding also was created king. If
then he wishes to fight against sin, let him consider with his whole mind. For the devils are the satellites of sin
which, being twenty thousand, seem to surpass in number our ten thousand,
because [they] being spiritual, compared to us who are corporeal, they are come
to have much greater strength.”[10]
St. Cyril reminds us: “For we fight
against spiritual wickedness in high places, but there presses upon us a
multitude also of other enemies: fleshly lust, the law of sin raging in our
members, and various passions-- that is, a dreadful multitude of enemies.”[11] The “natural” impulse is to give up and give
in to sin because sin is double our strength.
For this reason, Jesus is telling us to do the seemingly impossible,
which is not impossible because we will be turning to the King and His Church
for aid.
Once again, when it is all said and done, our Lord is reminding us that
we cannot follow passively, doing what we feel is necessary, resting upon our
own strength and wisdom. He is reminding
us that we cannot do this without Him, without the Church, and without each
other. We must “hate” ourselves and all
others that “pull” us away from Him, and we must trust Him and His Church, and
we must encourage and help one another along the Way.
[1] Aquinas,
St. Thomas. Catena Aurea - Gospel of St. Luke - EasyRead Version (Kindle
Locations 8363-8364). Kindle Edition
[2] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8365-8366)
[4] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8372-8374)
[5] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8374-8377)
[6] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8384-8385)
[7] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8384-8385)
[8] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8397-8399)
[9] Ibid.,
(Kindle Locations 8413-8415)
[10] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 8416-8419)
[11] Ibid., (Kindle Locations 8413-8415)
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