Sunday Homily, 7 September 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

On Boxing Day, we celebrate the feast of St Stephen.  New Year’s Day is Mary Mother of God.  Valentine’s Day is Sts Cyril and Methodius.  And here in Australia, this Fathers’ Day is “Hate your father” Sunday.  It seems our liturgical calendar operates on another plane; that’s no bad thing.

Although it lands on Fathers’ Day, this difficult passage is just where we’re up to in the Gospel according to Luke.  This is Luke 14 as it was last week; soon we’ll be into Luke 15 and 16.  We’re just over halfway through the Gospel.  Luke is especially attentive to the size of the crowds: by now, they’re crowds of a great size.

Why are the crowds following Jesus so large?  Curiosity?  Courtesy?  Occupation?  The Lord knows something isn’t right with them.  You can imagine the chatter around him as they go along:

“Make sure you feed the animals, dear.”

“The children need bathing.”

“I must get the harvest going soon.”

“We’re all looking forward to the wedding.”

“Grandad might need some extra help soon.”

It's all rather ordinary.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  We’re not angels, and we have to live the life God gave us and live it to the full.  The problem comes when those things crowd out God.  How many times do people say they’ve missed Sunday Mass because they were travelling or on holidays?  How often do our people regret letting untruths about the Church go unchecked at work?

This Sunday, we’re being asked to consider whether we have our foot on the escape hatch: if this God thing doesn’t work out, I still have a life.  Whenever this God thing is a bit much, I can always go back to my own family.  This kind of thinking is corrosive of our Christian faith and needs to be challenged every time.

We need to become the best disciples of Jesus we can, so that we’ll make it to Jerusalem with Jesus, so that we’ll enter his kingdom.  So, the Lord drops this teaching so that we’ll now think things through.

There might be three features of our life which we need to deal with to improve our discipleship.

The first is our anonymity.  For all the worthy chat about diversity, actually we like our neighbours to be bland.  “Keep it down over there” doesn’t just come from us; it’s also directed at us.  We’re not really allowed to be outstanding in matters of faith.  In such a situation, Christians could and do go to ground.  Hidden in plain sight, some Christians carry on as if they weren’t Christians.  To them the Lord says: You cannot be my disciple unless you give up your anonymity.

The second are our delusions about God.  Thankfully, there aren’t any immediate consequences when we sin.  Miss Mass one Sunday?  The sky won’t fall in.  Go on a three-day bender?  You’ll sober up.  Do shameful things alone or with others?  There’s probably no lightning bolt coming.  God loves us to death. He forebears with us to give us time to repent. We should repent and love him to death as well.  To those who think God is blind to our wrongdoing, the Lord says: You cannot be my disciple unless you give up your delusion.

The third is our relativism.  Life in a pluralist democracy such as ours means we have freedom of religion.  That’s a good thing: there’s no coercion to be Christian and no public consequences if you’re not one; it also means faith is born in freedom and love and gratitude rather than fear.  But we might be tempted to think that there are many ways to heaven, when there’s just one.  Everyone who will be saved is saved through Christ: we pray they will know him before their judgment comes, so that they bring their conduct in line with all that God wants.  Also, we could ask ourselves: which doctrine do we think the Church is wrong about?  If we have an answer to that question about doctrine, the Lord might well say we cannot be his disciple unless we give up our relativism.

The Lord has gone before us.  He made it to Jerusalem ahead of us, and he carried the cross for us.  Doing so, he gave us both the example and the grace needed to enact that example.  Yes, what he asks is challenging, even before we start thinking of the roadblocks we set up.  But he is here for you.  His help will be all the more effective if we give our all to him.  For he is true God from true God, and he is deserving of all our love.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest