Carmelite homily for Sunday, June 28, 2020 – Lectionary 97 (Matthew 10:37-42)
Today’s Gospel has quite a few harsh passages. ‘If you love your father or mother more than me you’re not worthy of me. If you love your brother or sister more than me you’re not worthy of me. Unless you take up your cross and follow you’re not worthy of me. If you seek to save your life you’ll only lose it.’ What’s going on? What I think Jesus is doing is inviting us to live a little deeper than ego. Ego is about my stuff, my power, my appetites, my wants, my control – me! And he’s trying to get us a little deeper than that. Saint Teresa of Avila, who would agree with this passage yet was very devoted to her family, writes, “If the soil is well-cultivated by trials and persecutions, criticisms and illnesses – for few there must be who reach this stage without them – and it is softened by living in great detachment from self-interest, the water soaks in so deep that one is never dry.” That is the invitation, actually, of today’s Gospel: to live so deep that we are never dry. Let us live there – try to live there – today.
