Sermon Tone Analysis

Title

Loving What is Ultimate

Outline

There is a trope in our time that one should love him or herself

Usually that means being nice to oneself, which would have sounded strange to St Francis de Sales who talked of disciplining oneself for a higher good

Another trope is that the family should be one’s highest good, one’s central love - perhaps more in Christian than in non-Christian circles today.

But what does this have to do with Jesus’ preferring the fictive family, the non-blood Church, to the blood family?

All of this and more has to do with the Wisdom of God

God’s Wisdom puts life in a transcendent context

We tend to think of our proximate good, often a material good, or perhaps the proximate good of the community

So we focus on loving our neighbor or even our father and mother as ourselves and ask what makes them happy or comfortable?

We make even Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love as willing the good of the other into something this-worldly rather than seeking the good itself.

Wisdom of Solomon tells us that that is foolish, for we are then living without our closed human sphere rather than seeking divine Wisdom.

And Divine Wisdom in person is Jesus

Jesus lays out this counter-intuitive life clearly

He looks at crowds following him and then says what will surely “thin” them - he was hardly into church growth

We must “hate” i.e. prefer obedience to him and his values to “father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters” - how many have not followed the call of divine Wisdom because of opposition from or the this-worldly good of family.

We should seek the good of family, but it is our ultimate value, divine Wisdom, who tells us what the good is.

Think of St Francis and St Thomas Aquinas and many others who did this literally.

We should not be Platonic body-rejecting or masochistic people - that was not Jesus - but we are called to rejected what the world calls our good or our happiness, even life itself for the following of Jesus: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

Think of the martyrs, but also of those who embraced suffering they had realized was the will of God.

And think of St Gregory the Great who rejected monastic life - his joy in prayer - for Jesus’ cross

Jesus is so serious about this that he tells his followers to “count the cost.”

“Everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

In the context possessions must include family and life itself.

I wonder how many of Jesus’ disciples turned back, muttering that he was not Wisdom but crazy and certainly theologically wacky?

We see this higher logic at work in Paul

Onesimus was AWOL from Philemon, but had met Paul and come to faith.

He had become a valued worker in the gospel.

Paul could have simply written Philemon that he was keeping Onesimus - that would have been good for Paul and good and safe for Onesimus.

But Paul lays down his life and sends Onesimus back at the risk that Philemon would follow his cultural values and punish him severely - that would have been keeping good order in society.

But Paul sees a higher good in following Jesus and laying down his life and in Onesimus doing the same and risking persuading Philemon to make a break with Greco-Roman culture and follow the values of Jesus.

That is what is behind the persuasive rhetoric.

Paul followed the Wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of this world.

So Sisters, we must follow this wisdom

Where in our lives are we facing a decision?

Perhaps it is in disciplining our inward attitudes, perhaps in our outward words, perhaps in our actions.

Do we follow the conventional wisdom, even good psychological wisdom, even the talk of self-care?

Or do we go before Jesus (or Mary), perhaps before the blessed sacrament, and say, “O my Jesus, I put my trust in your merciful goodness.”

“Show me how you would deal with this situation.

Show me how to seek transcend values, the true good for all involved.

Show me how to be your follower.”

And then do we renounce all we possess, even our own wisdom, and act as his disciple?

Readings

FIRST READING

Wisdom of Solomon 9:13–18b

13 For who knows God’s counsel,

or who can conceive what the Lord intends?

14 For the deliberations of mortals are timid,

and uncertain our plans.

15 For the corruptible body burdens the soul

and the earthly tent weighs down the mind with its many concerns.

16 Scarcely can we guess the things on earth,

and only with difficulty grasp what is at hand;

but things in heaven, who can search them out?

17 Or who can know your counsel, unless you give Wisdom

and send your holy spirit from on high?

18 Thus were the paths of those on earth made straight,

and people learned what pleases you,

and were saved by Wisdom.

RESPONSE

Psalm 90:1

1 A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, you have been our refuge

through all generations.

PSALM

Psalm 90:3–6, 12–14, 17

3 You turn humanity back into dust,

saying, “Return, you children of Adam!”

4 A thousand years in your eyes

are merely a day gone by,

Before a watch passes in the night,

5 you wash them away;

They sleep,

and in the morning they sprout again like an herb.

6 In the morning it blooms only to pass away;

in the evening it is wilted and withered.

12 Teach us to count our days aright,

that we may gain wisdom of heart.

13 Relent, O LORD! How long?

Have pity on your servants!

14 Fill us at daybreak with your mercy,

that all our days we may sing for joy.

17 May the favor of the Lord our God be ours.

Prosper the work of our hands!

Prosper the work of our hands!

SECOND READING

Philemon 9–10, 12–17

9 I rather urge you out of love, being as I am, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus. 10 I urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment,

12 I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.

13 I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, 14 but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.

15 Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, 16 no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.

17 So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

Psalm 119:135

135 Let your face shine upon your servant;

teach me your statutes.

GOSPEL

Luke 14:25–33

25 Great crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and addressed them, 26 “If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.