Suppose someone asked you in earnest to explain how the Lord holds the highest value in your life. In order to begin, in order to speak most sincerely about what has been and continues to be the highest value in my life, I would need to speak of family. No matter how old I get or how far away are the experiences, I still cherish those who were part of my life from the very beginning, those who loved me and who taught me to love. No other created reality equates with those who hold this place in my/our life.
If we acknowledge the family as the baseline for total dedication and unqualified love, then we can understand how it becomes the foundation for describing our love and dedication to the Lord. I have no better vocabulary or higher example with which to make this argument. And so, I understand the teaching of Jesus:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
I do not hear this passage insisting that one must love the Lord more than one’s family nor that one needs to disregard one’s family in order to follow the Lord. I understand the intent to use the family as an expression of how much one should love the Lord and how closely one should follow (see Lk 9:57-62; 18:29-30; Jn 12:25).
When I say: “I would not do that for all the tea in China.” It says nothing about my desire for the tea in China. It simply suggests that as great as the amount of tea in China, that is a measure of how much I would avoid a particular action. It offers a way of capturing a total decision by employing a colorful and superlative measure.
When we think about how many words would be required for us to express the fullness of the truth that we are dedicated to the Lord or to convey this truth in a manner that touches both the mind and the heart of the hearer, we can give pause. Introducing the model of the family provides words and an image that illustrate what I want to say. I want my thoughts and actions to make me “worthy” of the Lord in a manner similar to how I want to connect to my family who have defined love for me.
To follow Jesus involves one in “the total gift of self.” The cross captured the complete surrender of self to the Father in the life of Jesus. Jesus uses that symbol to express the truth in our lives as well. The cross invites us to a “losing of self” in order to find Christ in total dedication to following him:
“Whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.”
We choose to love the Lord every day—who will be our treasure, to whom will we direct our eyes, who will be our master. That conscious decision determines the direction and value for our lives. We pledge our heartfelt and intimate love to him. Thus, we pray to be worthy of this Lord and God with no compromise or qualification.
Remember that song that was very popular for the first communion of children—including my own:
O Lord, I am not worthy
That Thou should’st come to me,
But speak the words of comfort,
My spirit healed shall be.
Our worthiness arises as God’s gift to us as we strive to love and serve him.
RE: The family becoming the foundation for describing our love and dedication to the Lord.
The family becomes the foundation also, I suppose, for describing love and dedication to the Lord in terms of some folks receiving the gift to make themselves “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 19, 10-12).
RE: “Our worthiness arises as God’s gift to us as we strive to love and serve him.”
This sends me back to St. Paul’s insistence that God, not our works, justifies us. And parelleling this, I believe, is the idea that our perfection does not make us worthy of the Eucharist; rather the Eucharist makes for our perfection as it heals and nourishes those of us who are weak (see Evangelii Gaudium 47).