WHAT DOES IT COST TO BE A TRUE FOLLOWER OF OUR LORD? September 7, 2025
Today's Gospel contains one of our Lord’s “hard” teachings. Even by Our Lord’s own account, being His follower is not easy. There are choices to be made, and consequences to be taken on board. We cannot share priority between our Lord and other human persons, even our relations. Our Lord must come first always. This is not because He is egotistical or tyrannical. He does not argue that we should put Him first for His sake, but for our own.
Many great men and women have put this teaching into practice. To put anyone above God is to choose a creature over the Creator. It may seem necessary at the time and for a short time it may even seem to be the right thing, but in the final analysis it cannot work. In the long run, without God we lose focus and our eternal destiny may be lost. This is what Our Lord means when He also says that “no one can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions.”
We cannot serve two masters. God Himself has given us everything we have—our family, friends, our talents and possessions. We owe all to Him and we will have to surrender all to Him at the end of our lives. We can take nothing away with us when we die, only what we have done with all that God has entrusted to us. That is why it is essential to make the right choices now regarding the priority God has in our daily lives. This requires prayer and courage.
Again, the great saints show us the way. They knew they could not rely on themselves, but only on God’s grace. For instance, St. Paul had the courage by God’s grace to admit that he had been totally wrong about Our Lord, and came humbly to those whom he had been persecuting so viciously in order to ask for forgiveness and acceptance, knowing how much they would fear and distrust him at first. Yet his prayerful trust in Our Lord won through. Had he failed to do this, who can tell the consequences for him, or for the entire history of the Church? ~ Fr. Paul Dobson.
