Fr. Michael Williams

Our Lord often used strong, and even, exaggerated language to make His point. In today’s gospel, from St Luke, we hear Jesus say, ‘If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes even his own life too, he cannot be my disciple’. Our Lord is indicating that following Him can be costly and demanding. ‘A disciple of Jesus must give an uncompromising preference to the will of God over all other considerations. One must be ready to let go of any possession, a family tie, a personal relationship, an ambition, an occupation or a pursuit, if these run counter to the way of Christ’ (O’ Flynn).

To understand this strong language of Jesus we need to look at the lives of the saints, because they are the ones who put Jesus’ teaching into practice most faithfully. If we look at the life of Sir Thomas More, the great English Chancellor - during the reign of Henry VIII - we see somebody who chose the way of Christ above all other considerations. Sir Thomas More was Chancellor at the time when Henry VIII rejected the Church’s teaching on marriage. Thomas More would not countenance Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, because that would have been legitimising adultery, according to Christ in the gospels. Thomas More was thrown into the Tower of London for his opposition to Henry. This placed great strains upon More and his family. More’s wife, Alice, and their daughter, Meg, pleaded with Thomas to stop opposing the King and thus return home with them. In Robert Bolt’s play, ‘A Man for all Seasons’, which dramatises these events, Thomas’ wife Alice says, ‘You’re content then, to be shut up here (in the Tower of London) with mice and rats, when you might be home with us’! Of course Thomas More suffered terribly because he wanted to be with his family, but he knew faithfulness to the Lord was paramount. On July 6^th^ 1535 Sir Thomas More was beheaded, and thus he became St Thomas More. He had truly taken up his cross and followed the Lord into paradise. Interestingly, Pope Benedict will make an address from the spot where St Thomas More was condemned to death in 1535 for opposing the adultery of King Henry VIII.

Thomas More gives us an example of a someone who heroically followed Christ, and the demands of the gospel. He chose the way of Christ because he understood the way of the cross is the only way to Life. We probably won’t have to make such a public display of our faithfulness to Christ. But we will all have to make sacrifices if we are to remain faithful to the Lord and His way, especially in these days, when our Faith is often publicly ridiculed.

The saints of the Church show to us that it is possible to live out the demanding side of Christianity. So let us be inspired by their lives and accept the demands of our faith with courage and confidence, knowing that Christ’s way of the cross is the way to Life.