OT XIII [C]: I Kgs 19:16b, 19-21; Gal 5:1, 13-18; Lk 9:51-62

Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem for the last time.  Along the way, he meets three men who have heard his call in their hearts. These encounters teach us three tough lessons about what it means to follow Christ. To follow Christ, we have to transfer our sense of security.  We have to relocate it from ourselves to God. We have to unlearn the lesson we have been taught our whole life long, to rely only on ourselves for success and happiness. We have to learn to rely wholly upon God, plugging all our efforts in life into his grace. This is what Jesus means when he says that "foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to rest his head."

Christ is trustworthy, but he is not predictable. When we follow him, we have to agree to go one step and one day at a time - he refuses to give us a full-life outline in advance. When we follow him, we have to stop pretending that we can keep our lives under control by our own efforts. By accepting Christ's friendship, we agree to follow him, to put our lives under his leadership.

The prophet Elisha gives us an eloquent example of this transferal of our security in the First Reading. When Elijah comes and calls him [Elisha] to become his successor as Israel's prophet, Elisha goes back home to tie up loose ends. And he really ties them up.

He was a farmer. His whole livelihood, his whole way of life, was linked to his farm. This was how he made his way in the world. Up until the time of his calling, this was the source of his security. But when God makes his will known, Elisha doesn't hesitate to break completely with that former way of life. He doesn't just leave the farm behind. He actually slaughters his most important farm animals and burns his most precious tools - offering them all to the Lord as a sign that from now on he will depend on God for his livelihood and his happiness. Not everyone is called to serve God in this way, by consecrating their lives completely to the Church. But all Christians are called to make a spiritual offering to God of our oxen and our plows, of those things, talents, or activities that we tend to depend on instead of God.

God can only fill our lives with the meaning and fruitfulness we long for if we put him first, trusting that he will lead us better than we can lead ourselves.

 

We live in a fallen world. When we declare ourselves to be citizens of Christ's Kingdom, in a sense, we lose our citizenship in this world; we become aliens, refugees waiting to return home to heaven, or, as sacred Scripture often affirms, pilgrims. This earth is no longer our home, and the closer we get to Christ, the more we realize it, the more we feel its sufferings and imperfections. Christ only reached Easter Sunday by passing through Good Friday, and Christians can expect nothing less.

Two young martyrs names are mentioned in the First Eucharistic prayer: Saints Perpetua and Felicity. Their lives are so challenging to any Christian of all times. Perpetua, a young noblewoman and her slave Felicity, were martyred for their faith in A.D. 203, under emperor Severus. At the time of their arrest, Perpetua had an infant son, and Felicity was pregnant and a couple of days before their martyrdom she also gave birth.

Prior to their arrest, the women had been studying the Scriptures and were preparing for baptism. They were baptized in prison by their teacher, who was imprisoned with them. Their prison warden was so inspired by their faith that he converted.

While she was in prison, Perpetua wrote about the circumstances leading up to their death in a diary that was later published as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity – one of the earliest writings by a Christian woman. Perpetua’s mother was a Christian but her father was a Pagan.

In that diary she described: While we were still under arrest, my father out of love for me was trying to persuade me and shake my resolution.

“Father,” said I, “do you see this vase here, for example?”

“Yes, I do,” said he.

And I told him: “Could it be called by any other name than what it is?”

And he said: “No.”

“Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.”

Despite threats of persecution and death, Perpetua, Felicity refused to renounce their Christian faith.

In her diary, Perpetua describes her period of captivity: “What a day of horror! Terrible heat, owing to the crowds! Rough treatment by the soldiers! To crown all, I was tormented with anxiety for my baby…. Such anxieties I suffered for many days, but I obtained leave for my baby to remain in the prison with me, and being relieved of my trouble and anxiety for him, I at once recovered my health, and my prison became a palace to me and I would rather have been there than anywhere else.”

Perpetua and Felicity were thrown into an arena of wild animals, but they were not killed. Tragically, the emperor Severus then commanded that they be put to death by the sword.

Persecution for religious beliefs is not confined to Christians in ancient times. Consider Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who with her family, was forced into hiding and later died in Bergen-Belsen, one of Hitler’s death camps during World War II. Anne, like Perpetua and Felicity, endured hardship and suffering and finally death because she committed herself to God. In her diary, Anne writes, “It’s twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and God.” Perptual and Felicity did not have a long history of the Church before them only a little over a hundred years. How could two young mothers with babies not older than a couple of weeks say I love Christ more than my own life and my babies? Can you and I do that? Let’s think over it and check how strong our faith in Christ is.