Carry the Cross
Gospel Reflection for November 6, 2024
Today, Our Lord gives us another hard saying. Foreshadowing His own death and calling us to follow Him, He says:
“If anyone 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. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27
I want to look at the two parts of this statement. First, let’s deal with the curious hatred of family. We must immediately understand that nothing within the Law of God permits us to hate anyone. With that in mind, we need to look at this passage from a different point of view. Simply, hatred here is to be taken as a willingness to renounce anything for Christ. Our Lord uses the examples of first one’s own family, those who would be the most loved, and second, one’s own life as extreme examples of what we need to be prepared to give up for His sake.
What this places before us is an exhortation to love Christ above all things: our possessions, our family, and even our own life. We ought to prefer death over loss of Christ. The obvious conclusion here is that to follow Christ we must be willing to renounce all things and lay our life down for Him.
This moves into the second point. We must carry our cross and go after Him. It is not a coincidence that in this teaching, Our Lord uses the allusion of the cross to describe the type of sacrifice needed to be His disciple. We know that He would carry His own cross out of love for us and so, for Christ, the cross represents the apex of the act of love. If we are to love Christ in the same way that He loves us, we must take up our cross and carry it behind Him to our own Calvary. This introduces the reality of martyrdom. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks very beautifully about Martyrdom:
“Now, of all virtuous acts martyrdom is the greatest proof of the perfection of charity: since a man’s love for a thing is proved to be so much the greater, according as that which he despises for its sake is more dear to him, or that which he chooses to suffer for its sake is more odious. But it is evident that of all the goods of the present life man loves life itself most, and on the other hand he hates death more than anything, especially when it is accompanied by the pains of bodily torment, from fear of which even dumb animals refrain from the greatest pleasures, as Augustine observes (QQ. 83, qu. 36). And from this point of view, it is clear that martyrdom is the most perfect of human acts in respect of its genus, as being the sign of the greatest charity, according to John 15:13: Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”1
A man’s love is proved by that which despises for its sake. Our love for Christ is proved by that which we are willing to hate, that is renounce, for His sake. Ultimately, it is in sacrifice that what we love is brought to the forefront of our hearts.
What are we willing to despise for love of Christ? Are we willing to lay our life down, whether bloody or unbloody, for Him who has given us everything? It is in renouncing these things that we truly take up our cross and follow Him.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q. 124, a. 3.