Overview:
Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
A Reflection for Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
“Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
“This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.” (Lk 14: 28-30)
Find today’s readings here.
Do we understand what it means to actually live our lives as Christians? Sometimes I wonder. Particularly when I attempt to make sense of the Christianity I perceive some of my fellow Christians busily constructing during these troubling days. Even a casual cruise on Catholic or Christian social media will deliver me too quickly to some variant in image or text of a blond, blue-eyed, gun-happy, prosperity-gospeling Jesus that some who claim to be Christian seem to imagine as the foundation of their faith.
This is a version of Christianity that is somehow deeply comfortable with vilification and often blunt cruelty. It is one that puts power first, not God; a Christianity that leads with anger and arrogance, not mercy.
What am I to make of it?
The parameters of living a daily Christianity do not seem all that hard to perceive: mercy, compassion, love and kindness. Jesus spoke of these qualities over and over.
In today’s first reading, he implores: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. / Love does no evil to the neighbor; / hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Did he mean these love and mercy exhortations merely as metaphorical power points or are they meant to be a hard copy for a handbook on living a life in faith?
Don’t I show a kind of love when I judge someone else and deplore their behavior? How can they attain heaven if I don’t point out everything they are doing wrong on this earth?
Wouldn’t our whole society be better off if we could press Christianity upon it?
Whatever is gained under duress is not worth gaining. Whatever demands cruelty to embed is not worth embedding. Whatever I do in anger is not worth doing.
It is not an easy path to follow. Some of us can’t seem to accept its implications, preferring to bend and warp Christianity to our desires, our pettiness, our prejudices. We create exceptions, find ways to rationalize our actions, concoct strategies of exclusion and exemption.
The parameters of the Christian life may seem clear, but the demands of mercy and compassion it places on us are not small. Jesus warns in today’s Scripture that being a Christian might mean surrendering everything—family and cultural ties, worldly aspirations and ambitions, personal wealth.
He urges that we contemplate what sacrifices we are capable of in order to see it through and not to begin unless we are ready: “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost?”
I wish I could say I was ready, that I have calculated the costs and produced the correct outcomes, that I have a formula that makes sense. But I am probably much like you, looking down at my broken cross and trying to figure out each day how to lift it up to my shoulder and carry on.
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