How to Become a Disciple of Christ

Gospel Reflection for September 7, 2025 - Luke 14:25-33

And there went great multitudes with him. And turning, he said to them:

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

For which of you having a mind to build a tower, doth not first sit down, and reckon the charges that are necessary, whether he have wherewithal to finish it:

Lest, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that see it begin to mock him,

Saying: This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

Or what king, about to go to make war against another king, doth not first sit down, and think whether he be able, with ten thousand, to meet him that, with twenty thousand, cometh against him?

Or else, whilst the other is yet afar off, sending an embassy, he desireth conditions of peace.

So likewise every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:25-33 DRA)

The Gospel for this Sunday continues from last Sunday in Luke 14 and applies many of the lessons Our Lord gave earlier in this chapter. Through hyperbolic commands and mysterious parables, He lays the foundation for what the Tradition of the Church, guided by the Holy Ghost in the lives of the saints, would develop into Catholic spiritual theology.

The saints traditionally divide the stages of spiritual growth into three “ways”:

The Purgative Way: renouncing sin with all its glamour and attachments and avoiding whatever leads us to sin, even at the cost of losing friends, family and our physical or emotional comfort.

The Illuminative Way: renouncing even the good things of this world through fasting and self-discipline, so that we may prioritize and love God above all created goods.

The Unitive Way: once the path is cleared by the first two Ways, God can be loved as He should be, “with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength.” (Mk 12:30)

Christ here emphasizes the first two as pointing to the third. Firstly, only by carrying our cross, i.e. bearing the sufferings and temptations of life without succumbing to sin and offering them to God as penance, and risking the scorn of our loved ones (as often happens when someone converts to the Faith or begins living zealously and unapologetically Catholic), can we detach ourselves from the evils of this fallen world and its usurper prince, Satan. These are “the charges that are necessary” to lay the foundation of the spiritual life.

Secondly, we must realize that no created good is permanent or infinite; we can never be satisfied by any creature or achieve the unending joy and perfection we yearn for. Even with our ten thousand-man army of savings, cosmetics, exercise, dieting, etc., we can never hope to defeat the twenty thousand-man army of death and decay to which all material things are subject. St. Augustine thus explained:

Now to what these comparisons refer, He on the same occasion sufficiently explained, when he said, So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. The cost therefore of building the tower, and the strength of the ten thousand against the king who has twenty thousand, mean nothing else than that each one should forsake all that he hath. The foregoing introduction tallies then with the final conclusion. For in the saying that a man forsakes all that he hath, is contained also that he hates his father and mother, his wife and children, brothers and sisters, yea and his own life also. For all these things are a man’s own, which entangle him, and hinder him from obtaining not those particular possessions which will pass away with time, but those common blessings which will abide for ever. (Catena Aurea)

We must, therefore, send an embassy and inquire after the conditions of peace. This is the third Way, the Way of Unity with God. Once we have detached ourselves wholly from everything corrupt and corruptible, we can finally cling to the “one thing” that “is necessary”, (Lk 10:42) as St. Mary Magdalene did: God Himself through His incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Only then will we hear the words of Our Lord: “Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Mt 25:21)

The connection between the stages of the spiritual life and Christ’s words in this passage also make the first reading from Wisdom especially appropriate. Traditionally, the canonical ordering of the Wisdom Books in Scripture has been taken as an image for spiritual growth: Job removes obstacles to beginning on the Way by answering the “problem of evil,” that which hinders people most of all; Psalms teaches us how to pray; Proverbs shows the Purgative Way, how to turn away from sin; Ecclesiastes shows the Illuminative Way, that we must also detach ourselves even from good things if they distract from God; and the Canticle of Canticles shows the Unitive Way, how to love God above all things. Wisdom focuses on death, meditating on Aaron’s priesthood, while Sirach shows a priest, Simon, leading praise to God, thus teaching us the sacramental and ecclesial dimensions of the spiritual life, that we grow within the Body of Christ, not in isolation. This can also be seen in the design of the Jerusalem Temple.

A helpful addition to this traditional wisdom on the spiritual life comes from the writings of Charles Williams, an early 20^th century English author and a member of the Inklings, whose other members included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Though Williams was not Catholic and had some eccentric beliefs, he made a great contribution to spiritual theology by two images which he called the Silver Key and the Golden Key.

The Silver Key equates to the first two Ways of the spiritual life: in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, we must renounce all created things. This is unconditional and essential before any other progress can be made.

The Golden Key, however, does not equate directly to the Unitive Way. Rather, it reveals the role that creatures have when one has passed into spiritual perfection in union with God, whether in this life (to a lesser extent) or in Heaven. The Golden Key shows God’s true and original purpose in making creatures and placing men within the material world – not to distract us from Himself, which is the effect of sin, but to remind us of Him and to point us to Him through the truth, goodness and beauty which are His reflections in all creatures.

The Golden Key is not new to Charles Williams, of course, though he explained it with special clarity. In a similar light, Venerable Bede made an important qualification to Our Lord’s words which conclude today’s Gospel:

But there is a difference between renouncing all things and leaving all things. For it is the way of few perfect men to leave all things, that is, to cast behind them the cares of the world, but it is the part of all the faithful to renounce all things, that is, so to hold the things of the world as by them not to be held in the world. (Catena Aurea)

Only by renouncing, or interiorly detaching ourselves from, all creatures both good and evil, can we love God above all things as He deserves to be loved, and only by thus loving Him, emptying ourselves of all selfishness, can we be filled to the brim by His overflowing light. This is the spiritual perfection of the saints to which we should all aspire.

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