Discipleship

09-07-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Bing Colasito

Why should we be concerned to learn about the things of God? Modern man spends most of their time focused only on the things of this world. They believe that it should be enough for a man. St. John Paul II’s response to this kind of mentality, he explained in his Encyclical Letter, Redemptoris Hominis.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself; his life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately with it. This is why Christ the redeemer “fully reveals man to Himself.” If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension, man finds again the greatness, dignity, and value that belong to his humanity… The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being-he must, with his unrest, uncertainty, and even his weakness and sinfulness, with life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into Him with all his own self; he must appropriate and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarna tion and Redemption in order to find himself. (RH 10)

God created man in His own image and likeness and made man to share the very life with Him. He is our beginning and end; our meaning and purpose. For this reason, St. John Paul II said: Our lives are incomprehensible to us unless we know love-unless we know God. Meaning, only in God can we truly know ourselves.

Knowing the ways of God, in a sense, is discipleship. In the Gospel, Jesus teaches that anyone who wishes to follow Him must renounce all forms of attachments: relationships, possessions, and even his own life. Discipleship is making a sacrifice. It is letting go of lesser things to make room in our hearts and lives for much greater things that God wants to share with us. Here, the Lord is not saying that we should not love our families, but rather that we should not love them more than we love God.

Jesus reminds us that discipleship involves making decisions and having a purpose. He calls us to choose to give up our loved ones, possessions, and belongings, and to take up our cross and follow Him. To be a follower of Christ is a willingness and decision to leave one’s comfort zone, to deny oneself, and follow Him.

Discipleship means following the Lord. But before we can do so, we must change our attitudes and be free of our worldly attachments. In the same way, v.33 “anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” The man in the story was obviously so attached to his ways. EXTERIOR DETACHMENT >>> INTERIOR ATTACHMENT TO GOD

Those who joyfully leave everything in God’s hands will eventually see God’s hand in everything.