Everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions

5 NOVEMBER (Lk 14,25-33)

With Jesus the reversal of all the old ways of following the Lord is fulfilled. When the Lord called Abraham, the latter was asked to leave his land. However, he did not set off alone. He brought with him his wife, the male and female slaves, his flocks and his herds; his nephew Lot went also with him dragging all of his possessions with him.

The Lord said to Abram: “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.” Abram went as the Lord directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, all the possessions that they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land as far as the sacred place at Shechem, by the terebinth of Moreh. (The Canaanites were then in the land) (Gen 12,1-6).

One only left the land. He brought everything else with him. A pale image of the evangelical vocation could be Lot that leaves Sodom. He ismade the gift to save only his life and the lives of his wife and two daughters. Everything else must be abandoned. He can bring nothing with him. It is urgent to exit the sinful city.

As dawn was breaking, the angels urged Lot on, saying, “On your way! Take with you your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.” When he hesitated, the men, by the Lord’s mercy, seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters and led them to safety outside the city. As soon as they had been brought outside, he was told: “Flee for your life! Don’t look back or stop anywhere on the Plain. Get off to the hills at once, or you will be swept away.” “Oh, no, my lord!” replied Lot. “You have already thought enough of your servant to do me the great kindness of intervening to save my life. But I cannot flee to the hills to keep the disaster from overtaking me, and so I shall die. Look, this town ahead is near enough to escape to. It’s only a small place. Let me flee there – it’s a small place, isn’t it? – that my life may be saved.” “Well, then,” he replied, “I will also grant you the favor you now ask. I will not overthrow the town you speak of. Hurry, escape there! I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” That is why the town is called Zoar. The sun was just rising over the earth as Lot arrived in Zoar; at the same time the Lord rained down sulphurous fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah (from the Lord out of heaven). He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19,15-26).  

Jesus asks his disciples for a real spiritual death with the past. This death must embrace every person, everything. Everything has to be seen, experienced and observed starting from the fullest truth which is in the heart of Christ Jesus. Even the mind must be freed from its philosophical, theological and anthropological certainties of conventions and appearances so far considered essential. The adherence to the Gospel is more than a new birth. As you are born naked and nothing is brought into the world, so you must be born bare in the Gospel andnothing you have to carry into it of all that belongs to the old world. The new has to be perfect and absolute. The old must die.

Great crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and addressed them, “If any one 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. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us the wisdom of the Gospel.